


Hydra's Secret Weapon

by Pearl09



Series: The Life of Isabella Grant Barnes [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Adopted Children, Adoption, And By Baby I Mean Elementary School, Avengers Family, Avengers Tower, Baby Peter Parker, Dad Steve, Established Relationship, Gen, Loki Is A Good Person Now, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Original Character(s), Original Character-centric, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Protective Avengers, So I'm Making Some, We Need More Character Stuffed Animals, dad bucky, stucky fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-15
Updated: 2018-10-21
Packaged: 2019-06-10 10:15:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 21
Words: 28,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15289320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pearl09/pseuds/Pearl09
Summary: The Avengers are on a mission to stop Hydra from recovering a dangerous weapon that had been stolen. They know that when they find the weapon, they need to either destroy it, or keep it in the tower. No one was expecting the weapon to be this...





	1. Chapter 1

The doors of the house fly open, revealing the Hulk. He crashes through the door frame and starts to attack those in the house, and is soon followed by Tony, Natasha, Clint, and Thor. They draw in all the attention, causing everyone to attack them instead of trying to break the door upstairs down, the one with two bodies laying next to it.

Upstairs, outside of the room the people were trying to get in to, Steve and Bucky are trying to break through the bulletproof glass. They repeatedly hit at it, Bucky using his metal arm to punch it, and Steve hitting it with his shield. 

“What do you think is in here, Buck?” Steve asks.

“Whatever it is Steve, Hydra has gone a long way to track it down, and killed a lot of people in the process. We need to get it out of here and either destroy it, or keep it in our possession.”

The window cracks, finally relenting under the men’s ambitions. With one final punch, Bucky takes out the window. Steve crawls in first, shield up, ready to block anything that may come at them. He is surprised when he looks around the room and sees it is set up as a child's room. He lowers his shield and walks around, looking at everything. Bucky comes in behind him, and starts to go through a dresser.

“Oh my God.”

“What is it Steve?” Bucky walks over to him, standing in front of the cradle. He stops short at the sight too.

“Bucky, get a bag and throw as many supplies in it as you can. We’ll need it all.”

He goes over to the dresser and starts to pull everything out, shoving it all into multiple bags he found around the room. Steve hovers over the cradle, watching the sleeping baby that Hydra is after. He picks the baby up in a blanket, and does his best to swaddle her in the blanket. She wakes, and whimpers.

“Uhh, what do we do to quiet her?”

Bucky hands him a pacifier. “Here. Put it in her mouth.” He had a few younger siblings growing up, so he knew the basics of taking care of a baby. He then smashes a picture frame that looks to be her birth certificate and rolls it up, putting it in a pocket on his vest. He then picks up all the bags he prepared as Steve rocks the baby back and forth in his arms, trying to get her to sleep again.

Bucky turns to him. “Come on, let’s get out of here before Hydra realizes the others were a distraction. We already told them we’d meet them at the safe house.” He leads the way out the window, and finds the easiest path to get to the ground. Steve follows, holding the baby close to his chest. 

When they reach the ground safely, they both go running, getting away from the noise of the battle. Steve puts the babies face against his chest, not wanting anything to hit her. They make it to their car, and Bucky takes the steering wheel as Steve cradles the baby in the passenger seat. 

Bucky goes fast, but makes sure not to go too fast so that the baby stays safe. Half an hour later, they make it to the safe house. Steve won’t let go of the baby, who is fast asleep in his arms, so Bucky is left pulling all the bags off of himself and going through them. He then remembers the birth certificate, so he pulls it out and reads it.

“It says here that her name is Isabella, and that she’s only a little over a year old. She doesn’t have a last name.”

“You think that’s enough time that she can drink normal milk? I think there’s some in the fridge.”

“Yeah, should be. I know I grabbed at least one bottle –” He digs through the bags. “Ah, there it is. It’s microwaveable, too.”

Bucky fills the bottle and warms it up as Isabella wakes again in Steve’s arms. He smiles at her.

“Hi, there!” He coos, nuzzling her face. 

Bucky brings the bottle over, and takes the pacifier out of her mouth. “Here’s a towel, in case she throws up on you or something.”

Steve cradles her in one arm, and with the other holds the bottle up for her, watching her ice blue eyes scan her surroundings.

The front door opens, and Steve can hear everyone’s footsteps from the kitchen. Bucky goes to meet them.

“So, how’d it go on your end?”

“Well, Thor went a little crazy with the lightning and managed to disable the flight in my suit, but there’s not a single one of the Hydra agents left that were there,” Tony says.

Natasha steps in. “How did your end go?”

Clint asks a question before Bucky can answer. “And to add to Nat’s question, do you know if we are destroying it or keeping it?”

Bucky smiles. “We’re keeping it. I think Steve’s grown attached.”

“Have not,” Steve calls from the kitchen.

Bucky turns and starts to walk to the kitchen. “Oh, yes you have. You haven’t let her leave your arms.”

Everyone else follows. Bruce looks confused and asks, “Her?”

Everyone comes into the kitchen to see Steve facing away from them, bouncing lightly, with a towel over his shoulder. He slowly bounces himself to turn around, to show everyone the baby he was feeding.

“Shit they were after a baby?”

“Clint, be careful how you speak in front of a baby!”

“Technically, she looks to be too young to actually process anything, so she won’t remember.”

“Not helping, Bruce.”

Thor speaks up. “So this is what you Midgardians do, chase after babies?”

“I don’t think she’s an ordinary baby, Thor,” Natasha says. “If Hydra was after her, there’s gotta be something special about her. I found a computer there and grabbed it, let me look through and see if anything comes up.”

Everyone separates into different places throughout the house. Steve takes the baby to the living room and sits down on the couch, Bucky joining him. Natasha sits down at the dining room table and starts to go through the computer, as Tony and Bruce help. Clint and Thor are raiding the kitchen.

With the milk bottle now empty, Steve rocks the baby back and forth. She babbles nonsense. Steve nods his head. “Yeah?” He asks her, pretending to know what she’s saying.

Bucky stretches his arm out and around Steve’s shoulder. “And you said you weren’t attached.”

He looks at Bucky with his puppy dog eyes. “Come on, Buck, you know you would get attached too if you just held her for a bit. I mean, look at how big her eyes are!” 

She babbles nonsense again, and Bucky can’t help but smile. He kisses Steve on the cheek. “Okay, maybe she is a little cute.” He gets up and starts to organize everything he had thrown into the bags. Thor comes in and sits on another couch.

“So, what is the child’s name?”

“Isabella. Bucky found a birth certificate for her. They didn’t give her a last name.”

“Does the certificate say who her parents were?”

Bucky answers. “No, it only has her name and date of birth. No other information. Not even a time of birth.”

“When was she born?” Clint asks through the food in his mouth as he enters the room.

“March 10th, last year.”

“Wow, that’s the same as your birthday, Bucky!”

“Thanks, Captain obvious.” He continues sorting through things as Isabella starts to cry.

“Sounds like you guys are annoying the baby in there,” Calls Natasha. “I don’t have to step in, do I?”

Steve calls out to her. “No, keep doing what you’re doing. I think,” He holds her up and sniffs her diaper, making a face. “Yep. She has a dirty diaper.”

Steve sets her on the table and unwraps the blanket, revealing her tiny feet. He grabs them and says something in a really high voice, moving them around a bit.

“Here.” Bucky passes him a diaper and some baby wipes. Steve opens the onesie she is wearing and takes off the old diaper, holding her up by her feet. 

“Wow, that’s a smelly one.” 

Bucky takes her feet from Steve. “Go throw that out, I’ll finish cleaning her up.”

Bucky takes a wipe and makes sure to clean her properly, and then puts the new diaper on. He buttons the onesie, and she’s still crying a bit.

“What are you crying about now, huh?” He takes his hand and squeezes her stomach lightly, tickling her. She starts to laugh. “Yeah, you just needed someone to cheer you up, didn’t you?”

He passes his arm over her, and she reaches out and grabs one of his metal fingers. He lets her pull it down. “You want my finger, huh? What do you want to do with it?”

Steve comes back in and stands in the doorway, watching Bucky. Clint and Thor had left when they started to change her.

Isabella looks at the finger for a bit, then sticks it in her mouth. “You want to eat it, huh. Does it taste good?”

She makes some noise as an answer and Steve cuts in. “And I’m the one getting attached.”

Bucky looks up at him, and scoops her up with his normal arm, letting her nibble on his finger still in her mouth. “Babies are hard to say no to.”

Natasha, Bruce, and Tony come in. “I couldn’t find anything on her, but I found a location of a place that might. I’ll head out in the morning if anyone wants to come with.”

Bruce raises his hand, and Clint calls out from the kitchen. “I’ll go too.”

She turns to Thor who recently reentered. “What about you?”

“The more the merrier.”

She turns to Tony. “Tony?”

“Nah, I’ll head back to the States, make sure to get the proper paperwork set up for her so we can bring her back. Capsicle, Robocop, you should stay here and take care of her.”

“How long do you think you all will be?”

“Well, it’s an approximate location on a remote place in Siberia, so finding it and infiltrating it – Maybe a month? Two tops?”

“I’ll guess around there, too. Paperwork can get messy, especially with a case like this. I’ll do whatever I can.”

Everyone stays in for the night, as the safe house has enough bedrooms in it. Steve stays in the living room for a few hours, until Bucky comes back to find him laying out on the couch, with Isabella in his arms.

“Steve, are you going to come to bed anytime soon?”

Steve looks at him sleepily. “I’m gonna stay here for the night. We don’t have a bed for her and I don’t want to have her in between us and possibly crush her. You go on without me.”

Bucky sighs and kisses Steve on the forehead, and then brings him a blanket and a pillow. He puts his own blanket and pillow on the couch next to Steve’s. “If you’re staying here, then I am too. I’ll start working on making her a bed tomorrow, and it should be finished by the end of the week.”

Steve smiles as he looks down on the sleeping baby, a moon beam from the window falling across her peaceful face. He really would do anything for this baby.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed this! Let me know what you think in the comments!!


	2. Chapter 2

The next morning after everyone left, Bucky started the crib like he said he would. Steve was left alone with Isabella, not that he would complain. She was extremely active, almost always babbling nonsense, or eating Steve’s fingers. Once Bucky was finished with the crib, she would start to eat his hands too.

For the next two months, it was just the three of them in the house, and most of the attention was put on Isabella. Steve and Bucky would take turns watching her, each doing something different. Bucky would typically let her play with his arm, or try and teach her how to speak. He would pull up pictures on his phone of people or objects and tell her what they were, until she started to say something similar to what he said.

When Steve had her, he would cradle her, or bounce her up and down on his leg, or try and teach her to walk. They found out she already knew how to crawl very fast, when he set her down on the ground one time for a few seconds and had a panic attack when she wasn’t there after he came back. 

Now, Steve and Bucky were expecting everyone to be coming back. They had said in a text that they should be back soon. Bucky had Isabella last, but she fell asleep, so he laid her on the couch and made a wall of pillows to ensure she wouldn’t roll off of it. He then goes to join Steve in the dining room as he was staring out the window, drawing.

“Hey, Steve.” He yawns.

Steve smiles at him. “Does someone need a nap?”

“No, Isabella already fell asleep.” He chuckles and slips his arm around Steve, looking at his drawing. “I can’t believe how normal all this seems. And it’s only been two months.”

Steve sets his pencil down to slip his arm around Bucky. “Well, things do tend to feel normal once you fall into a pattern. It was nice though, to have some time away from the team.” Steve leans into Bucky and they kiss, but have to pull apart when they hear a thump and some giggles from the other room.

“I guess she woke up already.”

“Are you eating your feet? What, does no one feed you around here?” Natasha’s voice rings out through the house. Bucky gets up to greet everyone. Steve goes back to his drawing.

“Hey, Nat.”

“Tell me you’ve fed this poor child while we’ve been gone!”

He smiles and picks her up. “She’s just teething. She will literally put everything in her mouth.” His point is made when she puts his hand in her mouth.

Everyone else enters the room. Bucky looks around. “So, how’d it go?” Isabella tries to get out of his arms, so he sets her down on the floor. She sits and looks up at everyone in awe. 

“We got some information, but we had to run before I could decrypt it and read through it. So give me a few hours and it should all be decrypted.”

Everyone looks down as Isabella says, “Da!” and starts to crawl to the kitchen. Then she won’t stop repeating it. “Da da da da da da da da.”

They watch as she goes up to Steve and clings on his leg. Everyone moves into the kitchen to talk.

“The little squirt’s quite the runner.”

Tony steps into the house. “Was that a nickname I heard already, Barnes?”

“Maybe. But I’m not the first one who gave her a nickname.”

Steve puts down his drawing as he picks Isabella up. “Come here, pumpkin.”

Bucky points his arm at him. “Point made.”

“Pumpkin? Really, Rogers?”

“Are all Midgardian children named after food?”

“It’s just a nickname, Thor. Everyone has nicknames.”

Steve places Isabella on his knee and she holds onto his fingers. He starts to bounce her up and down, and she makes noise and giggles.

“While I was gone, I have gotten most of the paperwork together. I just need some signatures, and a few more days to register the paperwork, and then she can come back to the states with us.”

“What are we going to do with her then?”

He hands Bucky an envelope. “Look at this, and you’ll understand. It’s the only way possible to get her to come back with us.”

He pulls the paperwork out, and stares at it in shock. “You… Really?”

Isabella suddenly reaches her arms out to Bucky, again saying, “Da da da da da.”

He puts the paperwork down and picks her up, and Steve takes a look at it.

Tony answers his question. “I think out of all of us, it was the best choice.”

“What are you talking about, Tony?”

Steve speaks from the table, looking over the papers. “It’s – adoption papers. And he put me and Bucky down as her guardians.”

Everyone looks at Tony and he shrugs. “Thought it was the obvious choice. I mean look, she's already calling them Dada.”

Steve gives Bucky a look. “That’s because someone thought it would be funny when he was teaching her to speak that I was Dada. So I did the same in return.”

“I taught her a lot of things. You want to see her try?” He points to Natasha and speaks to Isabella. “Issy, who’s that?” She looks around, so he repeats himself. “Who’s that?”

She looks at Natasha. “Nah...ta. Nah ta!”

Natasha tilts her head. “Pretty impressive for how young she is.”

He points to Clint. “Who’s that?” 

“Cwin.”

“Ehh, close enough there.” Natasha nudges him, and he sticks his tongue out at her.

He moves on to Thor. “And who’s this?” 

“Thr.” She points to Steve. “Dada!”

Steve smiles at her, and she drools down Bucky’s arm. Bucky reaches to grab a towel and cleans the drool off of his arm and her face, and then continues. 

“Issy, who’s that?” He points to Bruce.

“Bruth.”

“Ah yes, that is definitely my name.”

Natasha nudges him too. “Guys she's doing great for only being a little over one year old. Cut her some slack.”

Bucky turns to the last person, Tony, with a devilish grin on his face. Tony eyes him suspiciously.

“Who’s this?”

It takes her a second to respond. “Gar..bag.”

Everyone but Tony immediately tries to hold in their laughter. Tony looks offended.

“What did she just say?”

Isabella repeats herself, much louder this time. “Gar bag! Gar bag.”

Steve asks Bucky with a huge smile on his face, holding in his laughter, “You taught her to call Tony garbage?”

Bucky answers with a grin, one he learned from Steve. Steve sighs and looks back at the paperwork. “Well Buck, I guess we’re gonna commit to this. Come here, help me fill out the paperwork.”

Everyone sits down around the table and starts to talk, Natasha pulling a computer out and starting to decrypt everything. Isabella reaches her arms out to the table, so Bucky sets her down there, letting her crawl around by everyone. Thor sets his hammer down on the table, and she tries to eat it.

Thor laughs. “Now now, little one, Mjolnir is not something you can eat.” He pulls her away from it, and sets her in his lap. 

She looks up into his eyes and points at him. “Thr!”

He laughs again and smiles at her. “Yes, young one. It is I, the mighty Thor.”

He plays with her as Bucky watches, and he can see the effect she’s having on everyone on the team, enrapturing all of their hearts. 

“Buck, we’ve gotta pick godparents for her.”

“Nat.”

She looks up, thinking he was just asking a question, then realizes what he said. “You want me to be her godmother?”

Bucky nods. “It’s the least I can do, after everything you’ve done for me and Steve, and everything we’ve done to you.”

Steve writes her name down on the paper and passes it to her to sign it. “I guess I’ll pick the godfather then.” He looks around the table, wondering which avenger to give the title of godfather. “Okay, let’s give it to her Uncle Garbage.”

“Gar bag?”

“Seriously?” Tony looks shocked. Steve hands him the paper he needs to sign. “I – uh, never thought anyone would make me a godfather.”

Steve looks at him seriously. “Is it because you’re a pile of garbage?”

Clint whistles.

“You know, Barnes, I’m gonna get you back for that one, somehow.”

Bucky shrugs. “It was worth it.”

Natasha sighs. “I don’t think I’ll be able to decrypt much here after all. Turns out the coding is a lot more in depth than I thought. I need to be back at the tower to do this.” She does a little bit of typing. “What I can access now, though, looks like she was involved in an experiment Hydra was doing to make weapons – around her time of birth.”

Isabella had gotten back on the table and now climbed over to Bucky, a look of determination on her face. He let her grab his fingers and stood her up, having her test her weight on her legs. She stared unrelenting at him, with the dorkiest smile ever on her face. Bucky couldn’t help but smile back. “I guess me and you have quite a bit in common, huh. Same birthday, Hydra wanted to use us as weapons…”

Steve finishes his thought. “And same last names.”

Bucky looks at him questioningly. Steve turns his attention to Isabella, putting the pen down after finishing the paperwork. “Welcome to the Avengers, Isabella Grant Barnes.”

She squeals, and buries her face into Bucky’s chest. “Why’d you give her my last name?”

He shrugs. “Honestly, that was the last part of the paperwork, and I wasn’t sure what to do. But when Natasha said she had been involved in a Hydra experiment… It felt right.”

Bucky smiles, his eyes watering slightly. “Thanks.” Isabella giggles after farting.

“She’s already taking after all the boys, I see.”

Bucky picks her up by her armpits and brings her in close, blowing a big raspberry on her face. She giggles and squeals as he does it a few more times. Then she yawns and rubs one of her eyes.

“I think it’s bedtime. I’ll go put her up.” He picks her up and puts her on his shoulders, holding her legs. She giggles all the way up the stairs, and sits up when Bucky sets her on the dresser. He pulls out of a drawer some pajamas to change her into, and starts on undressing her.

“Dada!” She squeals, looking up into his face. 

He smiles lovingly. “Yes, squirt. I am your Dada.” She makes a gurgling sound and bubbles of spit appear. Bucky wipes her mouth and finishes dressing her, and she yawns again. He picks her up and places her in her crib, and picks a book off of the shelf. He reads it out to her to help her fall asleep.


	3. Chapter 3

It takes another week for Tony to leave with the papers and then come back, bringing the quinjet with him. Everyone helped pack all of Isabella's things up, and is pretty much in love with her now. 

Steve wraps Isabella up in her favorite blanket, and puts a pacifier in her mouth. The quinjet lands in the backyard, opening up as Tony and Pepper come out and into the house. 

“Is everyone ready?” Tony calls as he enters the house.

“Yeah, we’ve just gotta grab all of Issy’s stuff and we can go.”

Isabella looks up at Steve as he coos at her. Pepper walks over to him.

“So this is what Hydra was after?”

“Yes, Pepper. She was involved in an experiment of theirs somehow, and I guess the two people who had stolen her from them and were on the run, to keep the baby safe.”

Isabella pushes the pacifier out of her mouth, but it is clipped to her shirt so it doesn’t fall. “Pepa?”

Pepper smiles. “Yes, that’s me.”

She turns away to help carry stuff out to the plane and Steve follows, making sure to keep Isabella safe in his arms. 

“Thor, Loki said he was starting to get worried about you because you were gone so long.”

“See, guys? He’s okay now. He’s changed.”

“Whatever you say, Thor.”

“Thr!”

Steve sits down on the plane and buckles in, making sure to keep Isabella safe in his arms. 

Bucky sits down next to him and looks over the seat at Isabella. He sticks his finger out and starts to tickle her stomach, and she laughs, her laugh ringing out in the quinjet. 

Everyone gets settles into the quinjet and they head back to the US, now that Isabella can come with them. Everyone does their best to keep her distracted, but she gets bored in the blanket without anything to do, so when they are almost back she starts to cry. Steve and Bucky do their best to keep her calm, which only results in slightly quieter crying. 

When they finally make it to the tower Steve is the first one off of the plane, everyone else agreeing to unpack for him if it means getting Isabella to stop crying. He walks out into the open air where she almost immediately starts to calm down, taking in the view of the city from this height. Steve walks into the top of The Avengers tower, and is greeted by Jarvis.

“Hello, Captain Rogers. Hello, Miss. Isabella.”

At hearing her name, she looks around for the person who said it, knowing it wasn’t Steve. Steve laughs. “That was Jarvis, pumpkin. He’s just a voice. Hello to you too, Jarvis.”

“Jar-ish.” 

“That’s right, Jarvis!”

Tony and Pepper walk past, and she points to Tony. “Gar bag!”

Pepper looks confused for a second, and then realizes what was said and excuses herself before Tony can call her out on trying to laugh.

“Is there no way to get her to stop calling me that?”

“I don’t know, Tony.”

“Toey?”

Tony looks up. Steve points at him. “Yes, that’s Tony!”

She stares at him for a few seconds, before reaching out towards him with her hands and saying, “Gar bag!” She then makes grabbing motions with her hands.

Tony scowls for a few seconds before taking her, to which she gives a delighted giggle.

“Steve, you’re back! Good to see you.” Sam walks over from the elevator.

“Sam! Good to see you. How’s everything holding up?”

“Well, nothing much has happened around here, if that’s what you mean. But sounds like you guys had quite the interesting trip.” He looks over at Tony. “Tell my why you chose this garbage over me for her Godfather?”

Tony looks at him, furious.

“Yeah, Sam, not a good nickname.”

Tony shoves Isabella back into Steve's arms and goes after Bucky. “Did you just get everyone to call me garbage, huh?! Do you want to be garbage?”

Sam looks on in confusion as Tony throws punches at Bucky, who is blocking them with his metal arm as best he can while laughing. Isabella watches with interest.

“Steve, what is happening.”

“Bucky taught little Issy here everyone’s names, and made Tony garbage.”

Sam shakes his head. “That’s my man. I knew I liked him for some reason.”

Isabella points at Sam. “Swam?”

He sticks his hand out and ruffles the little bit of hair on her head. “Yes, I’m Sam.”

Everyone unloads the plane and then finds a different part of the common area to rest in. Natasha goes back to trying to crack the encryption of the data. Steve and Bucky are sitting on the couches, letting Isabella crawl around in the little area they make. Thor joins them, content to just sitting and watching Isabella. 

“These codes are really encrypted. It will take me a few more hours still. I’ll let you all know when I do crack it.”

Steve and Bucky end up moving to the kitchen after an hour, leaving Isabella under Thor’s watch to get food for themselves and Isabella.

“Hello, brother.”

Thor turns his head and looks over to the elevator. “Loki! How goes your research?”

“Most of it was uneventful. There is one thing, but it can wait. How was your trip?”

“It was great!” He picks Isabella up and shows her to Loki. “Look what we found!”

Isabella waves hi, and Loki crosses the room to them, sitting down on the couch. Bucky and Steve keep an eye on them. “You found a baby?”

“It turns out that this little one is what the men who call themselves Hydra were after!”

She points to Loki. “Lo pee?”

Loki holds his hands out. “May I see her?”

Thor places Isabella in his open hands. Having finished preparing the food, Steve and Bucky start to walk back over to the couches.

“Thor, this baby has Asgardian blood in her.” 

“What do you mean by that, brother?”

“We should take her back with us and see. If she is an Asgardian as I believe, she deserves to be with her people, does she not?”

Steve and Bucky both heard this, so they set the food down and stand behind him with their arms crossed, blocking his way out. 

Thor looks up at them from where he is sitting on the couch. “No matter what her blood may be, brother, she should not be taken from her parents.”

“But if she is not Midgardian, then why should she stay with average parents?”

Isabella leaves Loki’s hands as he stands up, and everyone's attention has moved to them, except for Natasha’s.

Isabella clambers over to Steve, whimpering, “Dada.”

Loki was looking at her, but when she said Dada, his gaze was forced up to look at the men she was crawling to, and was met with a cold, mean glare from both Bucky and Steve.

“Oh,” He stammers, “Well, I guess, they are not average Midgardians, and – they will suffice.”

Isabella climbs onto Steve's leg and holds on, as the room gets tense and quiet.

Until Natasha lets in a sharp inhale, and everyone's attention focuses on her.

“Oh my God.”

She gets up with the laptop she had and plugs it into a projector in the room, the screen already coming down. Everyone moves over to where they can see it, Steve being careful not to let Isabella fall off of his leg. 

The screen boots up, and there’s a file on the screen. Natasha reads it out loud as everyone reads along.

“Weapon experiment A-2. Subject was run through a series of chemical tests. Nothing seemed to change, until chemical A-B was administered, in which subject I-S was created.”

“Subject I-S? And chemical A-B?” Bruce says out loud, before realizing, “How do you spell Isabella?”

Natasha scrolls down in the file, until a video appears. Loki and Thor make a noise.

“That’s a dead Asgardian. I do not know her name, but it is fairly easy to tell if you know what to look for.”

She presses play. Someone walks over to the body and empties a syringe in it’s arm, and for a few seconds nothing happens. But then there's a light that starts to form. A small glow, above the body. The glow grows until the light is almost too bright to look at. Then the glow fades, leaving behind a baby, which rolls over on the table.

Everyone stands quietly in shock once the video ends, until Isabella lets go of Steve’s leg, and crawls over to Bucky. He picks her up and says, “Would anyone like to attempt to explain this?”

Loki raises his hand. “Here on Midgard, most people are born naturally. But in the other realms, there are a lot of different ways that have been told of people being born. They say that some of the original ice giants were born from the first giant, out of his armpits and feet. So this birth seems to be like one of those. It would explain why she has Asgardian blood.”

No one else says anything for a few minutes, the end of the video still up on the screen. Everyone is trying to rap their heads around what this means. 

Once again, Isabella cuts the silence. “Dada,” She says, reaching out to Steve. He takes her from Bucky and everyone seems to unfreeze at this point. Natasha unplugs the laptop and makes the projector disappear again. Everyone else goes back to where they had previously been, but conversations were less casual and breaking up a lot, with everyone sneaking glances at Isabella, trying to figure her out. 

Steve sits down with her and sets her on his knee, holding her hands and bouncing her slightly. Her giggles light up the room, and everyone relaxes slightly. Nothing about her has changed after all, they simply know where she comes from now. She was still the same adorable baby.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What Loki is talking about is actual Norse Mythology, where the giant Ymir was made from a cycle of intense cold and heat between the realms. The tales say as he was sleeping, a son and daughter were born from the perspiration under his armpits, and his feet produced the six headed giant Thrudgelmir. This is where my idea came from for how Isabella was born(?)


	4. Chapter 4

Life in the tower was different now that Isabella was there. The Avengers would often find Steve or Bucky walking around with her, or feeding her, or sitting in the common area playing with her. Tony had bought two cribs for her. He gave one to Steve and Bucky to put on their floor, and he set the other one up next to the couches in the common area, so that whoever was watching her didn’t have to go to Steve and Bucky’s floor to put her down for a nap. 

Steve’s sketchbook started filling with different pictures of Isabella. Some of her sleeping, some of her sitting on Bucky’s shoulders, some of her laughing. It was safe to say that he was a little obsessed with her. Isabella was not afraid of Bucky’s metal arm at all, and often liked to try and climb it.

Everyone else in the tower had to adjust to her being around for a few weeks, doing things like having to be more quiet in the common area because she was napping. But everyone loved her, so they didn’t mind. It didn’t take long before her two cribs were full of stuffed animals, most of them being some animal dressed as one of the Avengers. She developed favorites quickly, and soon she wouldn’t go anywhere without the whale dressed as Captain America.

Even Loki, in his visits, grew fond of her. She had a charming quality to her that no one could resist. Her hair started to grow in, a nice bronze brown color. She never seemed to get sick, a fact that Steve and Bucky brushed off because she is an Asgardian. Even so, taking care of her was no easy task.

“Bucky?” Steve calls from the bedroom, after waking up to an empty bed. 

“In here,” he calls, and Steve determines it’s from the kitchen. Steve walks into the kitchen to see Isabella in her high chair, with Bucky trying to feed her.

“Breakfast time already, is it?” Steve moves to the fridge so he can get the milk out.

“I seriously don’t know how she didn’t wake you, with how loud she was. I thought she was hungry, but she’s refusing to eat.”

Steve pulls a bowl out of one of the cabinets and a box of cereal out of another. “Well, what are you trying to feed her?”

Bucky picks the baby food jar and reads the label. “Carrots. Apparently.”

“Why would you try to feed her carrots for breakfast?”

“I don’t know!” Bucky snaps, annoyed enough after failing to feed her for so long. “I was just trying to find something to get her to stop crying!”

Steve sighs, knowing Bucky hadn’t meant to yell, it just happens when he gets stressed. He pulls out a different jar of baby food and gives it to him. “Here, try this one. It’s bananas. She loves bananas. If it doesn’t work, then she’s not hungry.”

Bucky sighs and rubs his eyes, then takes the jar from Steve. “Sorry.” He opens the jar and finds a clean spoon, and tries to feed Isabella again. 

Steve eats a few bowls of cereal as Bucky successfully feeds Isabella this time, and Steve could see the tension leaving his shoulders as she finally started to eat. 

“Did you eat yet, Buck?” He shakes his head, currently occupied in trying to get another spoon into Isabella’s mouth.

Steve pulls out another clean bowl from the cabinets and sets it on the counter, and then moves over to Bucky. “Here, let me finish up. Go eat.”

Bucky doesn’t argue with him because he was starving. Moving out of the chair, he hands Steve the spoon and walks over to the counter to get the bowl, and pulls out another box of cereal. This time Bucky watches as Steve feeds her, trying to not make a mess but failing miserably.

When Bucky finished eating, he stood up quickly, realizing just in time what he forgot in the bedroom. He drops his bowl in the sink and hurries back to the bedroom.

“What’s wrong?” Steve calls to him as he feeds Isabella the last spoonful. 

“I forgot to bring Captain A-whale-ica out with us, you know what happened last time we forgot.” He brings the stuffed animal over as Steve wipes Isabella’s face clean, and she immediately grabs for the stuffed animal.

Steve hears his phone chime, so he lets Bucky pull her out of the high chair to go check it. He left it in the living room last night, because he was so tired he forgot to bring it with him. He’s surprised it wasn’t dead. 

Bucky walks in with Isabella on his hip, who is busy eating the tail of the whale. Steve looks up from his phone as Bucky crosses the room to him.

“Who is it?”

“Tony. Something came up, there’s been an attack over in Queens.” He sighs. “Guess it’s time to suit up.”

Bucky gives him a kiss on the cheek. “You’ll be fine. I’ll be here, watching on the news. Keeping an eye on this squirt.”

Steve returns Bucky’s kiss, giving him one on his cheek. He then blows a raspberry on Isabella’s forehead, causing her to giggle. “I’ll be back soon pumpkin, don’t you worry.”

“Dada!”

Steve smiles and then walks out of the room to put his uniform on and grab his shield. Bucky sets Isabella down in the living room so he can turn on the TV. She immediately crawls over to her pile of toys, and pulls out the Iron Man cat.

Once Bucky turns on the TV, he needs to only switch the channel to the first news station to find what was happening. The station had a helicopter flying above the chaos in the streets. It looked like someone made robots and set them loose on the city, and they were making an absolute mess. There were cars overturned, the windows of the nearby buildings were shattered, and there was an unusual amount of fire. One of the robots lifts it’s hand, and it shoots out fire. Well, that explains it. Bucky’s glad he has to sit this fight out. 

He sits there and watches as the team finally shows up, and how they scramble to get rid of the robots and not burn themselves in the process. They were doing a really good job at it, and it looked like the only one to get hit by the fire was Hulk, not like it hurt him. But of course, Captain ‘I will sacrifice my well-being for yours’ America has to jump directly in front of the fire coming from one of the robots to stop it from hitting Sam. Bucky is suddenly sitting on the edge of the couch, waiting for the fire to go away so he can see Steve again. Isabella notices his mood change, and looks up from her toys to the TV. 

The fire fades away, leaving the camera with a shot of Steve’s shield, smoking from the intense heat. Then Steve moves his arm and his head can be seen, showing that the shield isn’t what is smoking, it’s his helmet. He takes it off and throws it at the robot, which distracts it long enough for Tony to take the robot out. 

“Dada!” Isabella says, pointing to Steve on the TV screen. 

Bucky gets off of the couch to pick her up, needing a hug from someone right now. “Yeah, that’s your idiot dad out there.”

With the last of the robots gone, the news starts to survey the damage done, and the team leaves, so Bucky turns the TV off. A few minutes later, Steve enters the floor to find Bucky playing on the couch with Isabella. He starts to move over to them, before he freezes under the glare Bucky is giving him.

“Don’t you dare come over here punk, you go straight to the bathroom and get in that shower so you don’t smell like a campfire.”

Steve rubs the back of his neck. “You saw that, huh.”

“I told you I’d be watching. Even if I didn’t see it, I can smell the fire on you from over here. Go. Now.”

Steve does as he is told, because when Bucky glares at him like that, he has to listen to him. That was unusually calm for Bucky though, and Steve believes that if Isabella hadn’t been right there, the conversation would have been a lot louder and would not have been kid friendly. 

Once he has washed himself, dried off, and changed out of the uniform into normal clothes, he re enters the living room, only to find it full of the rest of the team. 

“Clint what is that.” Bucky states, looking at the object in Clint’s hand that he’s trying to give Isabella. 

“It’s a bird, dressed up as me?”

“Oh, is that what the purple fabric is?” Natasha teases.

“I couldn’t find a stuffed animal dressed as me, so I made one. They must have all been sold out because of how awesome I am.”

“Yeah, let’s say that’s the reason,” Steve says as he joins the group, sitting down next to Bucky.

Steve jumps forward, and brings a hand up to the back of his head, where Bucky smacked it. “Ow! What was that for?”

“What do you mean what was that for you son of a – potato! Don’t you ever do something like that again.”

“A potato? Really? Is that all you could come up with?” Steve ducks another hit from Bucky.

Isabella moves away from Clint and walks over to Steve, who picks her up and kisses her forehead. “You wouldn’t hurt me, would you pumpkin?”

She hits him on the nose. “Bad Dada.”

Everyone breaks out into laughter, Bucky laughing the hardest because of the glare Steve was giving him.

“I guess everyone's ganging up on me now. Thanks for that, Buck.”

He shrugs as the laughter dies down. “What can I say? She’s a fast learner.”

The rest of the afternoon is spent with everyone lounging around together, relaxing after the busy morning they had.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to apologize now for any past and future baby language - it can be pretty annoying to read and I promise it doesn't last for too much longer

The years passed by like this, with either Bucky or Steve going out on a mission while the other stayed with Isabella. In the couple of cases where both Steve and Bucky were needed, one of the other team members had to stay and watch her. Clint and Tony were only picked once each. After everyone panicked when they came home because they couldn’t find them only to later find Clint and Isabella crawling around in the vents, he wasn’t picked to watch her again. With Tony, they came back to find he had started to make a suit for Isabella, and he was chasing her around his lab while she was hovering around in half of the suit.

Natasha was trusted with her the most, everyone coming back to find them watching movies, or Natasha doing Isabella’s hair, or reading with her. Sam was trusted nearly as much as Natasha was, often found playing catch with Isabella. Bruce preferred not to watch her, fearing his other half, but they would come back to him reading to her, or doing safe science experiments with her. Thor was never trusted with her, after he tried to gift her with a sword because “The child should learn to defend herself!” They didn’t want to find out what he would do with her by himself. As for Loki, mostly everyone still saw him as a villain, so they definitely never let him watch Isabella.

Now, she’s four, and doesn’t like to listen.

Tony and Pepper are in his lab arguing one day when they get a call.

Jarvis interrupts the argument by saying, “Excuse me, sir, but Captain Rogers would like to speak with you.”

Before Tony can tell Jarvis no, Pepper says, “Let it through.”

Steve’s voice rings out through the lab over the speaker. “Hey, Tony, are you busy?”

Tony glares at Pepper before answering. “A little. Why, what’s up?”

“It’s – hard to explain. If you are busy, then I guess we can just call Thor… He can fly, right? Sam’s wings are probably too big...” In the background, a loud crash echoes, followed by Isabella laughing and Bucky yelling.

Tony is moving in an instant towards the elevator, not caring about his argument anymore. “I’ll be right there, hold on.”

Jarvis hangs up for him, and Steve turns back to the problem. He helps Bucky up off of the floor, leaving the chair that fell with him for the moment. 

“Well, we know who she takes after more,” Bucky says, brushing himself off. “At least I listened when someone said stop.”

Tony exits the elevator and ignores the door, deciding to walk right in because they were expecting him. He walks over to the two them. “What’s up?”

Bucky turns to talk to him as Steve leaves to search for Isabella. “Remember when we found those Hydra files, and we found out that Issy is Asgardian?”

“Yeah, what’s that got to do with anything?”

“There are some Asgardians who can use magic, right?”

“Yeah, like Loki.”

“Well, Issy must be one of those.”

“Get back here!” Steve yells, followed by more laughing, and the distinct sound of a little kid running, but something about it sounds different.

“You mean she’s using magic?” Bucky doesn’t need to answer him, because at that time Isabella decides to run into the room. Tony’s mouth drops open as the child runs past him on the ceiling, and Bucky tries to grab her as she passes over them. 

“What the hell?” Tony yells.

“Language!” comes Steve’s immediate response from another room.

Bucky looks at Tony again. “Please tell me you brought something down with you. We’ve been chasing her around for half an hour now.”

“Why didn’t you call earlier!”

“Because the big idiot in the other room insisted he could get her down without help.”

“What did he do?”

“He offered her a cookie if she would come down. She used some kind of magic to steal it from him.”

“Yeah, yeah I brought something, hold on.” Tony takes out of his pocket a prototype he had been working on, and presses a button. Immediately, the object unfolds itself and splits into four pieces, which each go to a hand or a foot. They form two gloves and two boots. “It’s for emergency flying. I count now as an emergency.”

Steve calls out from somewhere else on the floor, “I got her stuck in her room. Maybe we can actually get her now.”

Tony walks across the floor over to the bedrooms, where Steve is standing, holding one of the doors shut. He then activates his gloves and boots, and hovers over the floor. He nods to Steve. “Go ahead, open it.”

Steve opens the door and Tony quickly flies in, letting Steve shut the door again before Isabella can get out of the room. He spots her in the corner of the room and flies over to her. 

She starts to giggle. “Hi Uncah Tony.”

“There you are. Come here, let’s get you down.” Tony grabs her around her stomach and pulls her off of the ceiling, then flips her right side up and sets down on the floor. “Okay Rogers, I got her.”

Steve opens the door and rushes in, and Bucky stands in the door frame. Steve takes Isabella from Tony as he says, “Thanks, Tony. Sorry if we interrupted you.”

He waves it off. “No, this was definitely more important, The only thing you interrupted was Pepper yelling at me to get more sleep. Now, I can tell her that if I hadn’t made these, it would have taken a lot longer to get Isabella off of the ceiling, so you actually provided me with a great excuse in our argument. Call me down if you need help again, next time earlier than half an hour in.”

“Thanks,” Bucky says as Tony walks past him to leave. “We’ll do our best to stop a next time from happening.”

Steve starts to chide Isabella. “Pumpkin, you can’t go running around on the ceiling, okay? Both of your Daddy’s have special abilities too, but we don’t use them unless we need to. Isn’t that right, Buck?”

He nods and moves into the room. “Also, you need to listen to us. If you don’t listen to us again, you’re going to be in a lot of trouble, okay?”

Isabella nods and looks down at the ground. “Sawy Daddy.”

Bucky reaches out and ruffles her hair. “We don’t want to be mad at you squirt, trust me. But you keep doing stuff like this and we have to be. So don’t do it again.”

Steve presses a kiss into her forehead. “Once you start to go to school, you definitely can’t use your – magic, okay? There’s nothing wrong with it, but not everyone understands, and some people might be afraid, or might make fun of you. We don’t want that. We’ll get someone over here to help you learn how and when to properly use them, okay?” She nods, and he sets her down. “Now, can you pick your toys up for me? I think spider Black Widow is over in the living room. She doesn’t belong there, does she?”

She shakes her head. “No.” She then runs out of the room and Steve sighs, leaning against the wall. 

Bucky walks over to him and presses a small kiss against his lips, but then pulls away to ask, “What are we going to do?”

Steve scratches his head. “I guess – we’re going to have to trust Thor’s judgement. I don’t know who else would be able to help her other than Loki. Do you?”

Bucky thinks about it, and then sighs. “No. You’re right. Should we call him?”

“I’ll call Thor. It might be easier if we have him talk to Loki.”

Bucky nods. “Okay. I’ll go make some lunch.”

Bucky leaves the room, and Steve pulls out his phone. It rings a few times before Thor picks up.

“Hello? Thor? We need to talk.”


	6. Chapter 6

A week later, Isabella has been listening to her dads and hasn’t been running around on the ceiling again. She has, however, used some magic accidentally, including when she accidentally made Bucky float while they were watching a movie. It took forever to get him back down, as Isabella didn’t know how to put him back down.

That was the final straw for Bucky, who ignored Steve’s protesting that they should talk through Thor, and went straight to calling Loki. Surprisingly, he picked up, and Bucky was able to convince him to help, if not without a few bribes.

“Don’t you fucking touch those cookies Steve, they aren’t for you.”

Bucky was making cookies, one of the bribes he had used to get Loki to help.

Steve moves his hand back away from the cookies, looking defeated. “How’d you even know I was here?”

Bucky removes the last tray of cookies from the oven and looks at Steve. “I was a master assassin. You don’t think I heard you come in? Besides, even if I hadn’t heard you for some fucking reason, you always try to steal cookies when I make them. I promised Loki a specific amount of cookies, if you take one and mess the count up, and he doesn’t help us because of that, I promise you I will personally kill you with this spatula.”

“Geez, Buck, no need to be so intense. I’ll just leave now.”

Bucky threateningly points the spatula at him, glaring from behind it, “You better.”

Steve holds his hands up in the air and backs out of the room, then turns around with his hands still up and walks away, only putting his hands down once he knows he’s out of Bucky’s sight. 

Bucky uses the spatula to take the last cookies off of the tray, setting them on the rack to cool.

There’s a knock on the door, and Bucky calls out, “Steve can you get it?”

There isn’t an answer, but Bucky can hear the door open, so Steve did get it. Not too long after, Steve is walking into the kitchen with Loki following behind him.

“Hi Loki, thanks again for coming over. Cookies just finished, so some of them are still cooling.”

Loki nods. “You asked for my help?”

“Yeah. Steve, will you go get Isabella?”

Steve leaves the kitchen and Bucky turns to the table, where a small stack of books are sitting. “And there’s the books you asked for. Are we good now?”

Loki grins, which makes Bucky tense up slightly. “Yes. What kind of a magic problem are you having?”

“Hi Uncah Loki!” Isabella says as she enters the room with Steve. “I need your hwelp.”

“You need my help?” he says, arching an eyebrow.

Steve looks at Bucky. “Buck, what did you tell him?”

“I said we were having a magic problem.”

Steve puts a hand over his eyes and sighs. “Sorry Loki, Bucky should have been more specific. Isabella’s been having some issues, and could use some help.”

“I do not see how I can help if it is not magic related.”

“Bwut it is magic!” Isabella exclaims, and as if to prove herself, accidentally sets the paper towels on fire. Steve sighs and quickly throws them in the sink and turns the water on before the smoke alarm starts to go off. He then throws the ruined paper towels away.

Loki looks surprised. “You can use – magic?”

Isabella nods. “Bwut I can’t contwol it.”

“So you two asked me here to help teach her.”

Steve looks at him pleadingly. “Please?”

Loki stays still, not moving or saying anything. But there is not a single person that can say no to Steve when he gives them that look, so eventually his shoulders sag and he huffs. “Fine. Is there a place we use where she will not be able to accidentally break anything, or if she does it would not matter?”

“The training rooms would probably be the best place.”

Loki nods. “And I assume you don't trust me to go alone with her?”

“No. Not at all. Let me wrap your cookies up and then we can go downstairs.”

Bucky quickly wraps the cookies up and sets them on top of the stack of books, and Loki uses his magic on them to make them disappear. 

The four of them enter the elevator together and stand in silence as they take the elevator down to the training rooms. They pick the empty room farthest from the elevator for two reasons. One, so that if someone else comes in, they will be less likely to be hit by magic, and two, the one wall is made of glass, so Loki insists Bucky and Steve sit outside the room and watch, so there is less of a chance they can accidentally get hurt.

Steve and Bucky drag chairs through the hallway to outside of the window to keep a close eye on Isabella. Loki sits down cross legged, and motions for Isabella to do the same thing. She sits, and Loki starts to talk. 

Bucky and Steve can’t hear anything through the glass, so it gets boring rather quickly, just watching Loki talk. Bucky is used to it, after being a sniper in the army and then a trained assassin, he could sit still for hours on end. Steve has to go back up to their floor to grab his sketchbook and a pencil so he can do something as they sit there and wait.

Thor leaves the elevator and immediately spots Bucky and Steve, and starts to walk over to them. “Captain, Barnes, have you by chance seen my brother around?”

Bucky grunts an affirmative and points to the room. “He’s in there.”

Thor finishes walking over to them and looks in the room as Loki summons a green, flickering fire and holds it in his hand, and then sees Isabella try the same thing, producing a smaller, barely visible blue flame.

“The young one has magic?” Thor asks.

Steve answers, “Yeah, we’ve been having issues with it lately. That’s why we needed Loki. Bucky finally convinced him by bribing him.”

“Ahh, is that where the books and cookies came from?”

Bucky nods. 

“Well then, it seems I do not have to worry about Loki causing mischief if he is here. I shall take my leave.” He walks back over to the elevator and enters it, going somewhere else.

Bucky leans back in his chair and asks Steve, “You don’t think Loki would try to teach her anything bad, do you?”

Steve looks up from his drawing. “If Thor trusts him this much, I say we can give him a chance. And, well, he has practically been living here for the past few years and hasn’t necessarily done anything bad, just a few harmless pranks here and there, but everyone does that. Clint might have actually pulled more pranks than he has.”

Bucky nods, more to himself than Steve. 

They spend the rest of the afternoon sitting there watching Loki and Isabella practice magic.


	7. Chapter 7

After that first day, Loki didn’t need anymore bribing to help Isabella. He would offer whenever he was free to help, and would always be under the watchful eye of Steve or Bucky, but if they couldn’t make it they would sometimes send Natasha or Sam to watch. 

Loki didn’t do it for Bucky or Steve though. He did it for himself. He still remembers when he first learned how to use his magic all those years ago and how much it changed his life, and how his mother would teach him. Teaching Isabella reminded him of those times, so he was doing it because it made him happy. He didn’t want to hurt Isabella, and never would on purpose, but he understood why everyone didn’t trust him to be alone with her. He did try and take over the world, destroying half of Manhattan in the process.

One day, a new mission came in that required a specific set of skills. Bucky and Steve were both needed, so they were looking to see which Avenger would be able to stay behind to watch Isabella.

“Do we have to?”Bucky asks, clearly not liking the options. 

“What other choice do you have?” says Natasha. “The rest of us are needed in this. He’s the only one that can stay behind.”

Sam cuts in with, “It shouldn’t be that long if we play our cards right. Leave Isabella with Thor and Loki, we get our asses out of here, complete the mission, and get back before anything can happen.”

Steve sighs. “We’re wasting time. As much as I don’t want to, we have to.” He leaves the room to go find Isabella.

Everyone meets at the quinjet, where Steve hands off Isabella to Thor. “Keep her safe, okay? Don’t get into trouble!”

“You have my word, Captain. The child will be safe with me.”

“Bwye Daddy!” Isabella waves to Steve and Bucky as they climb on the quinjet. They wave back, and blow kisses to her as the door closes. Thor, Loki, and Isabella watch the quinjet leave the tower before doing anything.

Once they can’t see it anymore, Thor turns to Isabella. “Now, child, what shall we do while the others are away?”

She shrugs, not knowing what she wants to do.

Thor leads her back inside, before thinking of something to do. Loki follows behind them. “I know! Have you been taught how to fight yet?”

“No.”

“Then I shall take it upon myself to make sure you are properly trained, little one!”

Isabella shuffles. “Bwut Daddy said not to get in trwouble.”

Thor leads Isabella over to the elevator and laughs. “Do not worry, young one, you have nothing to fear. I will keep you safe, as I promised.”

Loki chimes in as he enters the elevator with them, “Don’t you think the little one might be too young for fighting, brother?”

Thor laughs, his deep chuckle rumbling through the elevator. “Nonsense! When I was her age, I was already fighting at Odin’s side. The least I can do now is teach the child how to throw a proper punch.”

The elevator doors open again on the training floor, but this time, instead of going into one of the rooms, the three go into the open arena, where everyone usually spars.

Loki stands off against the wall as Thor stands in the center of the room and kneels down. “Now, little one, hold out your hand.”

Isabella does as she’s told, and Thor takes her hand, curling it up into a fist. “This is what is called a fist. It is the basic position for fighting an opponent with only your hands.”

Isabella turns her hand over to study it. Then she nods. 

Thor continues. “Now, when you fight an opponent, you make your hand into this fist and use your arm to punch. Like this.” Thor curls his own hand up into a fist and slowly makes his arm move as if he’s punching something. “Normally it is a lot faster though, but if I am to teach you the basics, we will have to start slow.”

“What do you do when you are using somethwing else?”

“That is called hitting. It is nearly the same idea, just with an object in your hand, and not your fists.”

Isabella points to his hammer. “Like thwat?”

Thor gives a low chuckle. “Yes, little one, something like that. But not many can use this specific weapon, as only those who are deemed worthy can lift Mjolnir. Loki, come here.”

He picks the hammer up and flips it over a few times, and Isabella watches in awe, with her eyes wide. He then sets it on the ground and gestures to Loki, who attempts to pick it up, not moving it an inch.

“See? Hardly anyone can actually move it.” Thor shoos Loki back to the wall, and Loki decides his time can be spent better elsewhere, so he leaves.

Thor spends the entire time he has alone with Isabella showing her how to punch. But he takes his demonstrations a little too far.

When everyone was finally back from the mission, Thor, Loki, and Isabella were nowhere to be found.

“Jarvis, where are they?” Bucky asks, starting to worry.

“They are on the training floor, sir.”

Steve and Bucky barely spare a glance between each other before they are running to the elevator, wishing it could go faster so they can get down to the floor before anything happens. After an agonizing few seconds in the elevator, the doors open and Steve and Bucky step out, only to see Thor and Isabella on the training mats, and Thor had just picked up Mjolnir. 

Steve runs over in between them as Thor throws Mjolnir, and Steve catches it before it can do any harm. 

“Thor, I thought we said to keep her safe.”

“Ah, Captain, you have returned! I did just as you asked, my friend, I have kept the young one safe by teaching her how to defend herself.”

Steve sets Mjolnir on the floor before motioning to Thor to follow him. They enter one of the training rooms so Steve can speak in private with Thor on how to properly handle a child.

While Steve is occupied, Bucky focuses his attention on Isabella. “Are you okay, squirt?”

She nods. “I’m okay, Daddy.” She pauses, and then continues. ‘How did Daddy do thwat?”

“Do what?”

“Stop the ham.”

“Oh, did Thor tell you how only those who are worthy can lift it? Well, currently, we only know about two people who can lift it. One of them is your Uncle Thor, and the other one is your Daddy.”

“Not you?”

Bucky smiles. “No, not me. Maybe before this happened.” He gestures to his arm, but what he really means is before Hydra got him. “But there’s no way of telling that now.”

Isabella walks over to the hammer to look at it. “I’ll pick it up fwor you, Daddy.” She puts her hands on the handle, a determined look on her face.

“Oh, you don’t have to, squirt. I appreciate it though.”

Isabella won’t give up that easy, though. She pulls as hard as she can, and Mjolnir spins around and ends up going over her shoulder, causing her to lose her balance and fall over. 

Bucky stares at her with his jaw hanging for a few seconds before he says anything. “Steve?” He says, making sure it’s loud enough to reach the other room.

Steve leaves the room as he says, “What is it Buc–” He is cut off by the sight of Isabella standing back up with Mjolnir over her shoulder and a giant grin plastering her face.

“I did it!” she cheers, not knowing how shocking it is that she was able to pick it up. 

Steve turns back to the room and says, “Thor, looks like you can add another person to that list of the worthy or whatever you called it.”

Thor enters the room again to see what Steve means. A smile breaks out on his face. “See! The child is worthy for Mjolnir! If she is worthy, she needs to be able to fight!”

Steve nods. “I’m sure she will learn how to Thor, she lives in a building full of superheroes after-all. But she’s four. Let her enjoy her childhood, and when she gets older we will see about getting her proper training, okay?”

Thor nods. “That sounds fair enough. I must go share the news with the others!” He walks over to Isabella. “Little one, do you mind giving me Mjolnir back?”

She moves it from her shoulder and hands it back to him. Thor leaves, and Steve walks over, picking Isabella up.

“Did you have fun, Pumpkin?”

She nods. “I picked up the ham!”

Steve smiles. “Yes, yes you did. How about we go back upstairs and we can put on some Disney movies, okay?”

“Okay!”

Bucky follows the two of them back to the elevator, and they take it back up to their floor, settling into the couches for the rest of the day.


	8. Chapter 8

Needless to say, everyone was shocked Isabella could pick up Mjolnir. But everyone agreed with Steve to let her enjoy her childhood. They would start teaching her how to fight only once it was necessary. 

Loki continued his lessons with her, and soon, Isabella was able to completely control her magic, and started to learn how to use it in different ways.

Today was a big day for Isabella, and everyone had gotten up nice and early to make sure they were there for it.

“Bucky, have you seen her bag?” Steve calls as he’s pulling the supplies they had gotten together.

“She already has it, don’t worry. Just hurry up, everyone’s down in the lobby already.”

Steve walks over to Bucky and Isabella and opens the bag on her back, putting the last of the school supplies in it.

“Are you excited pumpkin?” Steve asks as he zips the bag back up.

She nods, but Steve noticed she hasn’t let go of Bucky’s hand. “It’s okay to be nervous or scared Issy. Going to school is a new experience, and you’re going to meet a lot of new people today. Can you promise me one thing?”

“What is it Daddy?”

They enter the elevator before Steve continues. “Don’t use your magic outside of the tower, okay? It might make people afraid of you, and we don’t want that.”

Bucky nods. “No one should be afraid of this young lady here.”

Isabella giggles, her face flushing slightly. 

The elevator doors open, and everyone is standing near the front doors, waiting to see Isabella off. They all smile as she gets off of the elevator, which results in a lot of hugging.

“Okay, guys, I’m sure Isabella has had enough hugs. If we don’t get going, we’re going to be late. You don’t want her to be late on the first day, do you?”

There’s a chorus of no’s and head shaking.

“Well then, we should get going.”

Steve takes Isabella’s hand, and Bucky takes her other one. They walk out of the tower together and start to walk down to the school. Tony had done extensive background checks on all the nearby schools and their employees, and the best one is within walking distance of the tower. They walk together down the streets of New York, and luckily no one recognizes them. 

Once they reach the school, they see the teachers all waiting outside, with groups of children forming near them. Bucky and Steve locate Isabella’s teacher, and they both crouch down to her level.

“We’re going to have to leave now, okay? You’ll be safe here, don’t worry.”

“And we’ll be right back here once school finishes for the day, okay squirt?”

She nods and wraps her arms around Bucky’s neck in a hug, and then does the same thing to Steve. “Love you Daddy,” she says to each of them.

Steve smiles. “We love you too, Pumpkin. No go join your class.”

She runs over to stand near her teacher, and the teachers start to lead the students into the building.

Steve and Bucky walk back to the tower in silence, not talking until they get back to their floor.

“You’re worried about her.” Bucky says as he pulls eggs out of the fridge.

“Maybe I am. It’s not like she’s had much of an interaction with anyone outside the tower, what if she doesn’t make any friends? What if she doesn’t like it? What if she doesn’t understand anything?”

Bucky starts to dig through the cabinets as he answers Steve, pulling different ingredients out of the cabinets. “Once she meets someone, she can tend to be a chatterbox. You know that. She shouldn’t have trouble making friends. If she doesn’t like it, that’s more of a problem. I guess we could pull her out and home school her? Tony could probably find some tutors if we asked. And you know that last question is complete bullshit. I’ve never met a smarter kid. If anything, she might know too much for her to only be in Kindergarten.”

Bucky finds a bowl and starts to throw ingredients in it. Steve watches him before answering. “You’re worried too.”

“Who says that?”

“You’re baking, and last I checked, you don’t owe anyone anything. You bake when you’re nervous or anxious.”

“Well maybe I just fucking want to make cookies to celebrate Isabella’s first day at school when she gets back.”

“Mhmm,” Steve says, wrapping Bucky into a hug from behind, resting his head on Bucky's shoulder. “Are you sure that’s the only reason?”

Bucky sighs as he starts to mix the dough together. “No. I just – What if Hydra comes back? What if they find her while she’s at school and take her? What can we do then?”

Steve tenses, as that thought hadn’t crossed his mind. “I’ll ask Tony if he can hack the nearby cameras for us so we can keep an eye on the school. He might even be able to set a few people to keep a perimeter on the place, if you really want.”

Bucky hums and leans into Steve, thinking about it. “The cameras would be nice, but I don’t think we’d both be able to constantly keep an eye on it. So if you could ask him for both?”

Steve kisses his cheek. “Of course. I’ll go ask him now.”

Steve leaves Bucky to finish the cookies as he walks over to the elevator to find Tony. It lets him out in the lab, and Steve sees Bruce. He walks over to him.

“Hey Dr. Banner, have you seen Tony?”

Bruce looks up from the machine he was working on. “Yeah, he just finished a suit and is out on a test run. You’re welcome to wait here until he gets back if you want, it shouldn’t be too long.”

“Thanks.” Bruce returns to his machine, and Steve stands around, waiting. After a few minutes, there’s movement outside one of the windows, and Steve looks to see Tony landing on his special launch pad, and the suit starts to disassemble off of him as he walks back into the lab. 

“Capsicle! You need something?”

Steve nods and walks over to him. “If you don’t mind.”

“What’s up? Is cyborg’s arm freaking out yet? I still don’t know how it’s lasted this long without any repairs to it.”

“No. His arm is fine. I came to ask for a favor. Bucky is scared Hydra might be able to get Isabella while she’s away from us at school, and we were wondering if you could possibly setup video surveillance and maybe a few people to keep an eye on the perimeter?”

Tony nods. “Yeah, yeah I’ll see what I can do.”

Steve smiles. “Thanks. We appreciate it.”

“I’ll come find you once I have something set up. Don’t worry.”

Steve walks back over to the elevator to get back to Bucky.

Later that afternoon, Steve and Bucky are standing outside the school, waiting for classes to be let out. They watch as the teachers slowly start to bring their classes out, and other kids run over to their parents. Finally, Isabella’s teacher exits the building, and a few seconds later Steve and Bucky are being tackled in a hug. 

“Hey there, squirt, did you have a good day?”

“Yeah! I met a lot of peepole today. I even made a fwiend!”

“That’s great pumpkin! We can talk about it as we go back, okay? We don’t want to be in the way of everyone else here picking up their kids.”

She nods, and they start to walk away, but one little boy calls out, “Bye Isabella!”

She turns to look and waves. “Bye, Peter! See you tomorah!”

Bucky and Steve glance at each other while Isabella isn’t looking. Bucky decides to address it.

“Was that your friend?’

“Yeah. He’s weal nice.”

Steve laughs as Bucky narrows his eyes and tries to look back to see the kid. He then ruffles Isabella's hair and says, “Daddy made some cookies to celebrate your first day of school! They’re waiting for us when we get back.”

Isabella smiles. “Yay!”

They spend the rest of the walk back to the tower listening to Isabella tell them about her day.


	9. Chapter 9

Isabella impressed all of her teachers throughout kindergarten with the amount of knowledge she has. She was one of the smartest kids in the class, rivaled only by Peter, which is why they became friends so fast. 

Time flew by fast and soon Isabella was out of kindergarten and the summer had passed. Now she was in a bigger building next to the kindergarten for first grade.

It was a rainy day, and Steve and Bucky had gone out together for a date night, so they trusted Natasha to pick Isabella up from school and watch her until they got back home. Isabella was silent the entire way back to the tower, with the hood of her jacket up and her head down. Natasha could tell she was in a bad mood, and didn’t know what she could do to help.

When they arrive at the tower, they go back to Bucky and Steve’s floor, so that Isabella could do any homework she had been given. She immediately goes to her room to work on it, and Natasha decides to let her be alone and cool off, and then maybe she’ll talk about what was upsetting her.

After a half an hour, which was usually how long it took Isabella to finish her homework, Natasha hasn’t seen or heard her, so she goes looking. She finds her in her room still, but not where she expected.

Natasha crosses her arms and looks up at Isabella. “Why are we sulking on the ceiling?”

Isabella doesn’t respond.

“Come on, Issy. You can talk to me. What happened that put you in this mood?”

She doesn’t answer right away, but when she does, she answers in a voice barely above a whisper. “Promise not to tell Daddy?”

“I won’t tell them, I promise. You should be the one to tell them when they get back.”

Isabella moves her head to look at Natasha, who’s eyes grow wide after finally being able to see her face. There was a big purple bruise covering one of Issy’s eyes. “Sweetheart what happened? Come here, let’s get you some ice.”

Isabella drops into Natasha’s open arms, and she takes her into the kitchen and sets her down at the table. Natasha then takes some ice out of the freezer and puts it in a plastic bag, wraps the bag in a paper towel, and brings it back to Isabella. 

Natasha sits down across from Isabella as she holds the bag against her eye. “Now, tell me what happened.”

“There was a fourth grader found me and my friend today.”

“Was he supposed to be there?”

Isabella shook her head.

“What did he do?”

“He started making fun of Peter.”

Natasha sits back in her chair. “What kinds of things did he say?”

“Peter doesn’t have any parents. He – found out.”

“And how did you get hurt?”

“I told him to stop. He hit Peter. I stepped between them to help. He hit me.”

Natasha purses her lips. “So he was being a bully, and you stood up to him to defend your friend.”

Isabella nods, looking as if she was about to cry. 

“Hey, Issy, you’re not in trouble. It’s good to stick up for your friends! But you’re going to have to tell your daddies when they get home what happened, because we can’t hide that bruise.”

Lip trembling, Isabella asks, “Will you stay with me?”

Natasha nods. “I promise. Now how about a movie to help you feel better?”

The two of them move to the living room to watch a movie, almost making Isabella forget about what happened. Until the door opened when the movie finished. Natasha quickly went to the door before Steve and Bucky could come into the living room, and Isabella could hear her them talking in low voices. 

Natasha re enters the living room and takes a seat right next to Isabella, upholding her promise. Steve and Bucky enter the room, worry plastered on their faces after the few words Natasha had said. When they see Isabella holding something to her eye, their concern grows, and it takes them all the restraint they have to stay calm and walk over to Isabella.

“Let me see squirt.” Bucky kneels down in front of her, and Steve sits next to her. 

She slowly moves the ice away from her eye, revealing the purple bruise.

Bucky’s eyes soften as he moves her hair out of her face to see it better, saying, “What happened?”

Isabella recounts her story. When she’s done, Bucky has a small smile on his face and is shaking his head.

“You know, your Daddy used to do the same thing.” He gestures to Steve, who gives him a look in return.

“Really?”

Bucky laughs softly. “Yeah. The punk would get beat up all the time standing up for other people. Always had to pick the fights with people bigger than him. He’s lucky I showed up to teach him how to fight, then he was only slightly less beat up.”

An idea sparks in Natasha’s eyes. “I think it’s time someone around here taught you a thing or two about how to fight, so next time you can defend yourself instead of taking the punch. As long as your daddies are okay with it, of course.”

Steve nods. “If she takes after me like this, we all know she’s going to need it.”

“You free this weekend, Nat? I don’t think I have anything on the schedule. She gets training from two master assassins, then she’ll definitely know how to defend herself.”

Natasha nods. “I’m almost always free. Just let me know.” She turns to Isabella. “I’m going to leave now, okay?”

Isabella nods. “Thank you.”

Natasha smiles. “You’re very welcome.”

Natasha stands and leaves the room, leaving Steve and Bucky to finish cheering Isabella back up.


	10. Chapter 10

“Issy, pumpkin, where are you?” Steve calls as he walks into her empty room.

“Over here!” She calls from a room on the other side of the floor.

Steve locates her and brings her the package he carefully wrapped this morning. “This is for you!” He kneels in front of her and hands her the package. She stares at it, eyes wide with excitement.

She quickly opens it, letting the paper fall to the ground, and opens the box to reveal a small pair of fingerless gloves. She pulls them out and flips them over, asking, “What are these?”

“They’re gloves, for training. You don’t want to hurt your hands while you’re training, do you?”

She shakes her head and then jumps on Steve, wrapping her arms around his neck in a hug. “Thank you Daddy.”

Steve kisses her forehead. “Of course, pumpkin.”

“Steve, stop holding the squirt hostage, it’s time to go.”

Steve stands, but Isabella clings to his neck, laughing. “I think she’s the one holding me hostage.”

“Well, we better fix that then.” Bucky crosses the room to Steve and plants a kiss on his lips, making sure to draw Steve in tight in order to squeeze Isabella. She laughs as she’s caught in between them, and when Bucky pulls away, she lets go of Steve and drops to the ground.

“Come on squirt, we don’t want to keep Nat waiting.”

She looks up as Steve and asks, “Are you gonna come watch?”

He sticks his hand out and ruffles her hair. “I’ll be down after a while, I have to do a few things before I come down.”

Bucky picks her up. “Come on, we gotta go.”

He picks up the gloves and hands them to Isabella, and they walk over to the elevator.

Natasha is already there when they reach the training rooms, attacking a punching bag. There’s a smaller punching bag set up next to it, perfect for Isabella.

Bucky sets Isabella down and goes to find his gloves. Isabella watches Natasha intently as she punches and kicks the bag over and over again. Only once Bucky has found his gloves and comes back does Natasha stop with the punching bag.

She turns to Isabella. “You ready for this?”

Isabella nods with determination on her face. “I don’t want to get beat up again.”

Bucky and Natasha spend the morning teaching Isabella how to punch, using the punching bags to show different punches. Steve comes down at lunch with sandwiches, and gets roped into sparring with Bucky, to show Isabella what a real fight would look like. Bucky takes the fighting to the next level without telling Steve, and within a blink of an eye Bucky is on top of Steve, with his thighs wrapped around Steve’s throat. 

Steve taps the floor three times, and Bucky releases him, letting him catch his breath.

“You jerk, you said this was just going to be punching!”

Bucky ignores Steve and sticks his hand out to help Steve off the ground. “I said we were going to spar to show Isabella how real fighting works. I never said anything about just punching. Mostly punching, but not only punching.”

Steve is about to respond when Natasha cuts in. “Okay you two love birds, that’s enough. We got some punching in, but we should get some blocking in too before we run out of time for today.”

Steve looks at Natasha with a question on his mind. “How are you going to do that, with Isabella being so much smaller than all of us?”

Natasha shrugs. “Show her a few moves, wait for Tony to finish the training robot he is making that’s her size, maybe get on our knees to have her try a few moves?”

Bucky immediately asks, “Training robot?”

Natasha nods. “Ever since he heard that Isabella was hurt at school, he hasn’t gotten any sleep trying to build a robot that will fight so she can practice on it.”

He shakes his head. “Typical Tony. It’ll make our life easier, I guess.”

The training continues, and they teach Isabella how to block and dodge punches. She isn’t very good at anything she's learned so far, but that’s what practice is for.

By the end of the day, Isabella feels like she’s ready to pass out because of how tired she is, and Bucky can see it.

“Okay, we’re done for the day.” He looks to Natasha. “Same time tomorrow?”

“Sure.”

Steve picks Isabella up, and she immediately rests her head on his shoulder, closing her eyes. “Let’s go put this one to bed, Buck.”

Bucky nods and removes his gloves, and then joins Steve and Isabella in the elevator so they can all get some rest.


	11. Chapter 11

Natasha and Bucky continue to train Isabella every weekend, and she slowly starts to get the hang of it. Luckily for her, the bully hasn’t been back yet. 

Her luck soon runs out though.

“Have a good day at school, squirt,” Bucky says to her as him and Steve drop her off. 

“I will, Daddy.”

Steve ruffles her hair. “Remember, if the bully comes back, let him land the first punch. You’ll get in less trouble that way.”

She nods, and then goes inside the school, making her way to her classroom. She hangs her school bag on a hook on the wall and pulls her homework out, bringing it over to her desk. Peter is already there in the desk next to her.

“Hey, Isabella.”

“Hi, Peter.”

“Do you wanna see something cool?”

Isabella nods, and Peter rummages in his desk, pulling out a stuffed animal Iron Cat.

“I think Iron Man is the coolest hero ever, and I finally got something of his!”

Isabella smiles. “I think Captain America is cooler. I have a whale dressed as him.”

“No way, he just throws around a shield and punches things in the face. Iron Man can fly! I wish I could fly.”

Isabella and Peter continue debating this until class starts, though Isabella knows her Dad is definitely cooler than her Uncle.

Class goes by like normal, with the teacher showing them how to add and subtract. Then the lunch bell rings, and Peter brings the Iron Cat outside to the playground with them.

“You should bring the whale someday, I’d like to see it.”

“I have a few other avengers stuffed animals too, like the Black Widow spider.”

“Wow that’s so cool, she is amazing!”

They were sitting on the ground in the corner of the playground, out of the way of everyone.

“Look at you, you probably think you’re so cool for having a stuffed animal with you.”

Peter and Isabella turn around to see the fourth grader has returned. Isabella stands, turning to face him.

“Stuffed animals are for babies and losers. Only a baby and a loser would own stuffed animals, and you’d be even more of a baby if you brought it to school with you.”

Peter was looking down at the ground, trying not to cry.

“Go away,” Isabella says. “Leave us alone.”

“And what are you going to do? Nothing. You’re just as much as a baby as this one is.” He quickly steals the cat from Peter, who tries to get it back, but the fourth grader holds it above his head.

“Please, give it back!”

The kid sneers at Peter, and holds it high enough that Peter can’t reach it. “No, I think it belongs to me now.”

“Please!” Peter begs, jumping to try and reach the stuffed animal.

The bully takes advantage of being so close to Peter and hits him on the side of the face, sending Peter backwards into the dirt. The group was too far away from everything for any of the teachers to notice.

Isabella plants herself in between Peter and the bully, glowering at him. “Give. It. Back.”

“You know what? You want it back? Here.” He rips the stuffed animal in half and throws the half of it over to Isabella. “Now it’s been split fairly, you get half, I get half.”

Isabella glares at the bully and steps forward, closer to him. “You give that piece back or else –”

“Or else what? Are your daddies gonna come save the day?” He drops the other half of the cat and punches Isabella in the jaw.

It makes her stagger backwards, but she grins, as that was what she had been waiting for.  
~~~  
Steve and Bucky arrive at the school as fast as they can, and follow instructions to the principal's office. They enter the waiting room and see a small boy with a black eye dejectedly looking over something broken in his lap, and Isabella sitting next to him, a bruise forming on her chin but her head held up high.

“Mr. Rogers? Mr. Barnes?”

“That’s us, yes.”

“Come in, have a seat.”

They enter the principal's office and take a seat in front of the desk as the principal sits down on the other side.

“I hope we didn’t pull you from anything important.”

“It’s okay, Mr. Dyer. What happened?”

“If it’s alright with you, I would like to wait for everyone else’s parents to come, so I don’t have to repeat the story.”

“Of course.”

They have to sit and wait for ten minutes before another person enters the office.

Mr. Dyer asks, “Are you here for Peter or William?”

“Peter. I’m one of the owners of the orphanage he lives at.”

Mr. Dyer nods and offers her a seat. 

Another minute passes before another woman enters the office in a hurry, clearly mad. “Who hurt my son?”

Mr. Dyer answers calmly, “Please, have a seat.”

She does so with a huff.

“I have called all of you here due to a fight that occurred on the playground today involving all of your children. We have heard each of their tales, and watched the security footage from the event. It seems that William was bullying Peter and Isabella, and when he punched them, Isabella fought back, in self defense.”

“My William wouldn’t harm a fly, you’re lying!”

“Cut the shit lady, they have security proof and everything,” says Bucky, glaring at her.

Mr. Dyer sighs. “I’ll bring everyone in one at a time, so you can hear their stories without having the influence of the others.”

He calls Peter in first, who looks down at the floor the whole time, avoiding the gaze of all the adults. It’s hard to hear him that way, but everyone manages to understand that he said William broke his toy.

Bucky’s glares manage to keep William’s mom from saying anything when Peter finishes.

Isabella comes in next, and keeps her head up high as she explains how she was hit first after William hit Peter and broke his toy, so she fought back.

Lastly, William comes in. Bucky and Steve hadn’t seen him in the waiting room, so they are surprised when he enters the room with a sling on his arm and his face covered in purple bruises. He makes up some story about how Isabella and Peter attacked him and he was just acting in self defense.

William was sent back to the waiting room, and that’s when his mom started to yell.

“My poor William! Can’t you see he did nothing wrong? The other two were clearly lying, clearly working together to tell you their lies, and that little – bitch beat him up!”

Bucky starts to say something back, enraged that she just said that about Isabella, but Steve stops him and stands up. He calmly walks over to William’s mom and towers above her, standing tall. He narrows his eyes and says in a calm but furious tone, “Do you really think Captain America would raise his daughter to be a liar?”

William’s mom is speechless, cowering under the threatening gaze from Steve standing above her. Her gaze falls over to Bucky, who’s glare is so strong it leaves her quivering in her seat, afraid. She closes her mouth and doesn’t speak another word, so Steve returns to his seat. 

Mr. Dyer clears his throat. “While what William said is an impressive story, their fight happened in full view of one of the cameras, so we can confirm that he took the toy from Peter, ripped it in half, and proceeded to punch Peter. Isabella stood up for Peter while he was on the ground, and he punched her, giving her free access to fight back in self defense.”

“So what is it you’re going to do?” the person who runs the orphanage asks.

“Being as William was the one who started the fight, he will have a six day in school suspension, starting tomorrow. You can take him home with you today. Peter, being a complete victim in this case, will be sent home for the day, and he can return to school normally tomorrow.” He turns his gaze to Steve and Bucky. “While Isabella was also a victim in this, we can’t excuse how badly she beat up William, so in order to keep them separate, Isabella will have a one day out of school suspension. Take her home with you, bring her back Monday.”

Steve nods. “Understood.”

Mr. Dyer stands. “Mrs. Brandt, if you would stay, I would like to discuss Peter for a second. Everyone else may leave.”

William’s mom leaves the room first, quickly leaving and pulling William out with her. Steve and Bucky leave together a lot slower, with Bucky saying, “I can’t believe you pulled the Cap card.”

Steve shrugs. “It was better than you threatening her. Be honest, if I hadn’t stopped you you would have, after what she called Isabella.”

Bucky doesn’t answer but makes a vague head movement, agreeing with Steve. They enter the waiting room just as Tony comes in from the hallway.

“Tony? What are you doing here?”

“I heard something happened, thought I’d drop by.”

“Isabella fought a bully.”

Tony looks at Isabella and points towards the door he just came in. “Was that him?”

Isabella nods with a smirk on her face.

Tony whistles. “Man, I’d hate to be on the other side of your fists.”

At this point Peter looks up, his eyes growing wide. “You – You’re Iron Man!”

Tony nods and looks at the ruined stuffed animal in his lap. “I can get you a new one, bud. Rough bully, huh?”

Isabella nods as she hops off of her chair. “You’re Peter’s favorite superhero.”

“I am, huh?”

Peter smiles weakly. “We were arguing this morning about who was better, you or Captain America.”

Bucky asks, “Let me guess, Isabella said her favorite was Cap?”

Peter nods.

Steve speaks up. “Don’t listen to her, she’s biased.” 

“Yeah, Captain America is by far the worst.”

Steve sticks his tongue out at Bucky and then picks Isabella up, setting her on his shoulders. This causes Peter to actually look at him, and his eyes grow even wider. “You – Captain America? You’re dad is Captain America?”

Isabella smiles. “One of them.”

Bucky waves from the corner. “I am also here, though no one seems to notice. I’m Bucky.”

Peter can’t believe his eyes, seeing three heroes in front of him at once. “If only my Dad was still here. He’d – He loved the Avengers.”

Tony looks at him with sad and understanding eyes. He asks Isabella quietly, “Is this the kid with no parents?”

She nods. 

Tony taps his foot, thinking. “I’ll meet you guys back at the tower, I need to talk to the principal.” He enters the principal's office without waiting for a response.

Steve and Bucky walk out with Isabella riding Steve’s shoulders the entire way home.


	12. Chapter 12

Steve wakes up the next morning to the smell of pancakes. He groggily gets out of bed and makes his way to the kitchen, and sees Bucky making chocolate chip pancakes. Isabella's favorite. 

At the table, Isabella and Natasha are talking, both of them with smiles on their faces. Steve walks over to them, stopping to kiss Bucky on the cheek as he passes him.

“What are you girls talking about?” he asks, taking a seat at the table.

“Aunt Nat was out last night, so she didn’t get to hear the story.”

Natasha smiles at Steve. “Sounds like she did a number on that guy.”

Bucky walks over with four plates of pancakes and sets them down in front of everyone, sitting himself down in front of the other one. “You should have been there to see him. His arm was in a sling, so she probably sprained his wrist, if not worse, and his face was covered in ugly purple bruises. I wish they showed us the video, I wanted to see it in action.”

“You could probably ask Tony to hack it from them if you really wanted to see it.”

Bucky stuffs some pancake in his mouth before saying, “I’ll think about it.”

Once everyone is finished their pancakes, Natasha has to leave, and Steve and Bucky start to clean up. There’s a knock on their door.

“I’ll get it!” Isabella says as she slides off of her chair.

Steve and Bucky can hear from the kitchen, “There she is! There’s the girl who stood up and beat that bully senseless.”

Isabella giggles. “I didn’t beat him that bad, Uncle Sam.”

The two walk into the kitchen together. “So, who’s ready for a day of celebration?!”

Steve looks over at Sam. “I don’t know if I’d call it celebration, after all, Issy did still get in trouble.”

“Keep your own stupid opinions to yourself,” Bucky says. “You know perfectly well that you did the same exact thing and got in trouble for it too, and you didn’t say anything like this back then.”

Steve rolls his eyes and goes back to finish washing the dishes.

“So, what have the two of you planned for the day?”

Bucky shrugs. “Some of what we have planned will depend on how fast the tailor can finish something. But Issy said she wanted to bake, right?”

Isabella nods with a smile on her face. 

Sam shakes his head. “I don’t know if four of us are going to fit in this kitchen, man.”

“We all are now, idiot.” Bucky sighs. “Fine. Me and Issy will stay here and I will show her how to bake one thing that she wants, and you can accompany Steve on his ‘secret mission’.”

“What kind of a secret mission is it?”

Isabella pouts. “One that everyone but me knows.”

Bucky ruffles her hair. “You’ll find out soon enough, squirt.”

Steve and Sam leave the floor after Steve finishes the dishes, leaving Bucky and Isabella in the kitchen. Bucky picks her up and sits her on the counter so that she can help out easier.

“Anything in particular you want to make?”

Isabella thinks for a few seconds, then says, “What about brownies?”

Bucky smiles. “As long as we have the ingredients, we will make whatever you want.” He starts to move around the kitchen and pull ingredients out. 

Together, the two of them mix all the necessary ingredients out, and soon enough, the brownies have been put in the oven.

“Well now, all that’s left is to wait for them to bake. Let’s clean up before Daddy gets back, or he’s going to clean it all himself and complain while doing it.”

Isabella giggles. “Okay.”

Bucky washes the dishes and Isabella stands next to him, keeping an eye on the brownies in the oven. The smell of chocolate wafts through the air, and by the time Bucky puts all the dishes away, the brownies are done. He opens the oven and pulls the pan out with his left hand, and then sets the pan on a towel on the counter. 

They hear the door open from the kitchen, and soon Sam and Steve have come back in.

“Something definitely smells good, what did you make pumpkin?”

“Brownies!” she exclaims, and then adds, “But you can’t have one yet. They need to cool.”

“Well, that gives us plenty of time for this then!” He pulls a box from behind his back.

“What is it?”

“I guess you’ll have to open it to find out.” He hands her the box, which she sets on the floor.

Carefully pushing the lid open, Isabella finds a light blue pair of pants that matches the light blue and yellow shirt, with yellow shoes and a yellow mask.

“What is it?” she asks as she pulls the shirt out to look at it.

Bucky smiles. “We thought, after yesterday, that you acted just like a superhero. But all superheroes need costumes, don’t they?”

Her eyes light up. “It’s a costume for me?”

Steve laughs. “Yeah, pumpkin. Why don’t you go try it on while the brownies cool?”

She takes the box with her as she runs to her room.

“So,” starts Sam, “Do you really think getting her a costume is the best idea?”

“What, you think she’s going to put it on and go running around outside, fighting grown adults?”

Sam shrugs. “I’m not saying you should completely cross that out. I’d keep an eye on her. I should go, Tony was making some adjustments to the wings. I’ll be expecting pictures of her in that costume when she’s done putting it on though.”

“Want a brownie for the elevator?” asks Bucky, who starts to cut them.

“If I ever turn down something you’ve baked, then the person you’re talking to is not me, but a clone or a really good looking robot.”

He takes a brownie and then leaves. Bucky manages to plate the rest of the brownies before Isabella comes running back into the kitchen. She plants her feet in the doorway and puts her hands on her hips, and Steve and Bucky look over at her. 

“That looks really good on you, squirt? Do you like it?”

“I love it!” she responds with a big smile.

“What would your superhero name be? All superheroes have names.”

She thinks about it. “I don’t know.”

Steve thinks as Bucky gives her a brownie. “What about Magic-Girl?”

“Come on Steve that sucks. You should be glad they gave you a name and you didn’t have to think of one.”

“Okay, fine. You think of something, if you think you could do better.” Steve takes a brownie off of the plate and eats it.

“What about The Sorceress? I know if I was a bad guy I’d be running from someone with that name.”

“I like it!” exclaims Isabella, stuffing her mouth with the brownie.

“See? I told you yours sucked.”

Steve sticks his tongue out at him and then pulls out his phone. “Let’s get some pictures, pumpkin. Everyone wants to meet the tower’s newest superhero.”


	13. Chapter 13

“Hey Daddy?” Isabella calls out to the kitchen, where Bucky is busy making dinner.

“Yeah, squirt?”

“Can I go over to a friends house tomorrow after school?”

Bucky leaves the kitchen so that he doesn’t have to continue to shout at Isabella. “Who is your friend?”

“Peter.”

“The one who was also being bullied?”

She nods.

Bucky sighs. “It’s okay with me, but we’ll have to check with your other Daddy, okay?”

“What about me?” Steve says as he walks into the room.

Isabella turns to him. “Can I go with Peter tomorrow after school?”

Steve nods. “Yeah, pumpkin, you can go to your friends house. We will come and pick you up at the orphanage tomorrow night, okay?”

Isabella smiles. “Okay. Thank you!”  
~~~  
Peter and Isabella walk out of the school together, and walk the couple of blocks over to the orphanage. Peter leads her up the stairs and into his room without anyone noticing.

“Did you bring it?”

Isabella nods, and then opens her backpack. She pulls out of it the pieces of her costume.

“Wow, that looks so cool! So you said you can do magic?”

“Yeah, I can! Watch this!”

She holds her hand out, palm up, and, with a little bit of concentration, a blue butterfly forms, and flutters around the room for a few seconds before disappearing.

Peter watched with wide eyes. “Wow, that is amazing! You wanna see mine?”

“Yeah!”

Peter crawls under his bed and pulls out a box. “I got this from Iron Man! He made it to help me feel better after the whole bullying thing.” He opens the box and pulls out a red and blue costume.

“What is it you can do again?”

Peter goes over to the wall. “I have super strength. I also can climb on things that normal people can’t.” He then proceeds to climb up the wall, and then crawls onto the ceiling. He drops back down on the bed, and picks the costume back up. “These things shoot spiderwebs! Mr. Stark made them for me too.”

Isabella tosses her bag to the side and grabs her costume. “Do you have a bathroom?”

“Yeah, it’s the room next door.”

She leaves the room, and Peter undresses himself, putting on the costume.

Isabella comes back in wearing her costume, and stuffs her clothes back into her bag.

“What’s your name again?” Peter asks.

“The Sorceress. My dad made it up.”

He nods. “I think I’m going to go with Spider-Man. I think it sounds cool.”

“I agree. Are you ready to go, Spider-Man?”

They open the window in Peter’s room and sneak out onto the porch roof. Peter climbs up the side of the house to reach the top, and Isabella does the same, using her magic to help her.

They sit down on the roof and look out into the street.

“Wouldn’t it be cool to be an actual hero?” asks Peter.

“Yeah. I watch them all the time, they’re really cool.”

“You also get to live with them, which is even cooler.”

Isabella lays down on the roof. “How would we though? We might get in trouble.”

Peter stands up. “Like this!” He sticks his hand out and pulls in two of his fingers, shooting a web across the street. He then jumps off the roof and swings across the street, landing on the other roof.

“Peter, be careful!” Isabella calls out as she stands.

Peter just turns back to her and says, “Betcha can’t catch me!”

He hops onto another roof and starts to run. 

Isabella uses her magic to hop across the street, and soon is chasing after Peter across the rooftops. When she does catch up to him, he holds a finger to his mouth, telling her to be quiet. He then points a finger down over the edge of the roof.

Isabella peeks into the alley and sees two men trapping another man against the wall. One of them is holding something in their hands, the other one is speaking.

“Is that a gun?” Isabella whispers, and Peter nods. 

“Okay, when I say three, I’ll get rid of the gun, and then we hop down there and stop them, okay?”

“Wait, what?”

Isabella doesn’t get an answer. “Three!”

Peter shoots a web at the gun and pulls, and the gun clatters on the roof next to him. He then jumps down and starts to attack the man, so Isabella jumps down and punches the other man. Being that he is so much older than her and she doesn’t have super strength like Peter, it doesn’t affect him. 

She decides to use her magic instead, forming a blue flame that flickers above her hand before she throws it, and the force of it knocks the man over into the wall. He hits his head hard, and it knocks him out.

Peter manages to punch the guy he was attacking in the head, and it knocks him out. The other man that was being robbed is still standing there, watching everything that is happening.

“Who – who are you kids?”

“I’m Spider-Man.”

“And I’m The Sorceress. You might want to call the police before they wake up.”

He nods. “Thank you for saving me.” As he pulls out his phone, Peter and Isabella quickly climb back up to the roof.

“We should get back, I don’t know when my dads will be there to pick me up.”

Peter nods. “I had fun though. To feel what it’s like to be a hero.”

They take the roofs back to the orphanage, and slip back into Peter’s window. They quickly change out of their costumes and into normal clothes, and then they go outside and sit on the front steps and do their homework together.

Steve and Bucky arrive just as they finish their homework.

“Hey, squirt, did you have fun?”

Isabella closes her bag and puts it on, and then says, “Yeah, we had a good time. I’ll see you Monday, Peter!”

“See ya, Isabella!” He goes back inside.

“So, why were you on the front steps?” Steve asks as he takes Isabella’s hand so they can cross the street.

Isabella shrugs. “Peter said it was a nice day out, so we sat there and did our homework and did some other stuff while we were outside.”

“Well, I’m glad to see you’re making friends. Peter seems like a nice kid.”

“We’re having dinner with everyone tonight. I think they just ordered some pizzas. That sound good to you?”

Isabella nods. “I am definitely hungry.”

“Yeah, I bet what you guys did today was a lot of fun and made you hungry. Don’t worry, there’s always plenty of pizza.”

Isabella smiles, and hopes that Bucky and Steve don’t find out what they really did.


	14. Chapter 14

Isabella is in the living room watching a movie with Steve the next morning when it happens.

Bucky’s voice rings out, “Isabella Grant Barnes, where are you?!”

Steve pauses the movie and says, “We’re in here, Buck. What's wrong?”

Bucky enters the living room and glares at Isabella, who promptly tries to hide behind a pillow.   
“What’s wrong? Have you not seen the news at all this morning?” Bucky doesn't wait for an answer. “It's everywhere! Everyone is talking about the mugging that was apprehended by two little kids yesterday afternoon. You know who one of them said they were? The Sorceress.”

Steve’s eyes grow wide and he then looks at Isabella. “A mugging? Was there a gun involved?”

“Yes,” Bucky answers. “There was. Her little friend Spider-Man took the gun from the man, and then they proceeded to fight the two men until they were unconscious. I think it's safe to assume that Spider-Man is Peter.”

Steve takes the pillow from Isabella. “Issy, you could have been hurt! And there was a gun, what if you were shot? We didn't know you were out, we wouldn't have been able to come to you!”

Isabella curls up, making herself as small as she can. “I – I was following Peter. We were just playing when he found them. He jumped in before I could stop him, and – I didn’t want him to be down there alone.”

Bucky shakes his head. “You are so much like your father it scares me sometimes.” He sighs and rubs his face. “Look, I’m not mad at you. I was just concerned, okay? Some people out there won’t care if you’re too young, they will not hesitate to hurt you.”

“Here’s what we’ll do. I’ll ask Tony to make you a phone. You will be able to contact everyone with it. If something like this happens again, you call someone before jumping into it, okay?”

Isabella nods.

Bucky sits down on the couch next to her, and she uncurls as he runs his hands through her hair. “There’s something we haven’t told you.”

He makes eye contact with Steve across the couch, and he moves closer to the two of them, nodding.

“When we found you, there were some really bad guys chasing after you. There’s a chance they could come back for you. If you keep going into the public like this, they might find you. We don’t want that to happen, okay squirt?”

She leans into Bucky’s side and says, “I’m sorry. I’ll be more careful. But–” she pauses and looks up at Steve. “What if Peter jumps in again before someone else shows up? I don’t want him to get hurt.”

“Well then, pumpkin, as long as you make sure someone is on the way, try to get Peter out of there. If you can’t, then and only then can you help him out.”

“Got it.”

“Sorry to interrupt, but Mr. Stark would like to see the three of you in the common area.”

“Thanks Jarvis. Let him know we’ll be up shortly.” Steve stands and pulls Isabella up off of the couch. “Let’s go, if he’s willingly out of the lab then something must be up.”

They take the elevator up to the common area, and they are greeted by Tony standing in the middle of the room, surrounded by screens of information.

“You certainly had some fun yesterday, didn’t you, Issy?” asks Tony as soon as he sees them. The screens are covered in different articles and videos talking about the two little kids the day before. 

Bucky speaks up. “We already talked to her about it, Tony. Speaking of which, can you make a phone for her so if this happens again she can call someone?”

“Yeah, I’ll get that done. What I’m more interested in is what the hell is Peter doing?”

“Tony, what have I said about cursing near Isabella? And, more importantly, how did you know it was Peter?”

Isabella answers for him. “Uncle Tony made the suit and the web shooters.”

Steve raises his eyebrow and looks over at Tony.

“After you guys left the principal's office when Issy beat that bully up, I felt bad for the kid. I asked him if there was anything he wanted, other than me just replacing his toy. I was handed a few drawings, and made the costume. I thought the web shooters were just for pranks, not – fighting crime.”

“But you also made it so he can climb up the walls like that?”

Tony shakes his head. “No, I didn’t do that.”

“He climbed the walls before he put the costume on,” Isabella says.

Bucky puts his hand in his face and sighs. “So what you’re telling me is that you made a superhero costume for a little kid, and didn’t think about asking him why?”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

“Well, we should probably tell the orphanage owners so they can keep an eye on him and try to keep him out of trouble.”

Tony waves his hand. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Why, did you already take care of it?”

Jarvis cuts into the conversation. “Excuse me, sir, but Ms. Potts is on her way up.”

“Thanks Jarvis. Yeah, his parents already know. Well, one of them anyways.”

Bucky says, “His parents?” at the same time as Steve says, “He was adopted?”

Pepper walks out of the elevator and Isabella turns around to look. “Peter?”

Steve and Bucky turn around to see Pepper isn’t alone. She had brought Peter up with her. Bucky and Steve connect the dots.

“You two adopted Peter?”

“Don’t act so shocked, Rogers.”

“You?” Repeats Bucky.

Tony sighs. “Yes, and I can tell you all the reasons why later when certain people aren’t present.”

Peter shyly waves from behind Pepper.

“Tony, I put all of his things on our floor. Will you be free soon to help me unpack it?”

“Of course, Pepper.” Tony walks over to Peter and ruffles his hair. “So, bud, I think we should talk about yesterday, don’t you?”

Peter laughs nervously. “I, uh, don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Tony points to the screens. “It’s literally right there, in plain sight. Why didn’t you tell me you wanted the costume so you could wear it to go fight crime?”

Peter shrugs.

“Okay, what about the powers? I made you the web shooters, but I definitely didn’t give you the ability to climb walls, or super strength.”

“I was bit by a spider.”

“Must have been one hell of a spider.”

“Tony, watch your language!” says Pepper, and he rolls his eyes.

“Oh Lord, now there’s two of you. Okay, we’ll talk about this later. For now, let’s go get your things unpacked, okay?”

Tony, Pepper, and Peter enter the elevator together, leaving Bucky, Steve, and Isabella to wait for it to come back up so they can get back to their movie.


	15. Chapter 15

Having Peter in the tower now was certainly interesting for everyone else. They had gotten used to one child already, but now there was two, and both of them liked to act like superheroes. Peter was really shy for the first few weeks, meeting all of his heroes, some of them for the first time, and then realizing that they were now his aunts and uncles. And Iron Man, his favorite, was now his dad.

The only time he wasn’t shy was if Isabella was around. They had been friends since kindergarten after all, so they knew each other already. Everyone in the tower tried their best to make sure they were never alone, because when they were left alone, they got into all sorts of trouble. It made for one eventful summer. They told Jarvis to be aware of this as well, but Jarvis believed that as long as someone else was on the floor, they would be okay.

“Miss Barnes, Mr. Parker has requested that you join him in the common room. Sergeant Barnes is also there, preparing dinner for everyone.”

“Okay!”

When Isabella steps off of the elevator, she is greeted by an empty room, and can smell the food in the kitchen.

“Psst!” Isabella looks in the direction of the noise, and sees Peter crouching on the ceiling. He gestures for her to join him on the ceiling.

“What are you doing?” she asks.

“Shh! Be quiet!”

She joins him on the ceiling, and he tells her his plan.

“So, Uncle Bucky is in the kitchen making dinner. That means someone else, probably Uncle Steve, will be up here to help him move the food onto the table. If we stay up here, we can scare him, or whoever comes to help. Unless it’s Aunt Natasha. We can’t sneak up on her.”

The two of them slowly make their way into the dining room, knowing if they get too close to the kitchen, Bucky will hear them, and they will be caught. They hear the elevator open, and they quickly freeze, making themselves as small as they can so that whoever it is can’t see them.

Steve walks through the room and into the kitchen, and the kids get by unnoticed. They continue to make their way over near the kitchen door as Steve starts to talk to Bucky.

“It certainly smells good in here. Do we have everyone coming up tonight?”

“Well, Thor and Loki are currently not on earth. So they won’t be joining us. I think Pepper was convincing Tony to leave the lab, but other than that, yeah I think everyone else is coming up.”

“Have you seen Isabella?”

“Last time I saw her she was in her room. But that was before I came up to start cooking.”

“I just came from our floor. She wasn’t there.”

“Well, let’s hope she’s not with Peter. Jarvis?”

“Miss Barnes is on this floor.”

“Oh? I don’t think I heard her.”

Steve enters the dining room again, and calls out, “Issy? Can you come here?”

Issy and Peter, now behind him, stand up on the ceiling and say, “You called?”

Steve jumps and turns around quickly, scowling. Peter and Isabella are laughing.

“What did I say about scaring people like that?”

“You said not to do it if they have something in their hands or if it’s Uncle Bruce, Uncle Steve. It doesn’t look like there’s anything there, unless it’s invisible.”

Steve sighs. “You’re right, I did say that. Please, stop scaring people like that.”

Isabella pouts. “But it’s fun!”

“You sure are right it’s fun!” says Clint, popping his head out of the vent that’s in between Peter and Isabella. Everyone jumps at him, causing Peter and Isabella to fall off of the ceiling. Steve catches the two of them before they can hit the floor. They start to laugh again as Clint pulls himself out of the vent.

“What is going on in here?” Bucky asks as he comes to stand in the doorway. He looks at Steve, who is holding both Isabella and Peter upside down, and sees Clint coming out of the vent, and says, “Never mind. I don’t want to know.” He leaves the room and goes back to the kitchen.

“Clint,” says Steve as he sets Peter and Isabella down. “You need to stop too. You’re not providing a good example for the children.”

Clint jumps down on the floor and shakes his head. “Nah, they’ve got you for that. Someone’s gotta show them how to have fun sometimes. What kind of person are you if you don’t get into trouble every now and then?”

Bruce walks into the room. “Ah, Clint, did you finally finish cleaning the egg off of the side of the building?”

He nods. “Yeah, that sucked. But that doesn’t mean I’m not gonna do it again. You should have seen Tony’s face when he saw it.”

“Well what do you expect, you wrote ‘Tony Sucks’ on the side of the tower in eggs. It was all over the news.”

Clint waves it off. “Yeah, whatever.” He moves into the kitchen. “Bucky, my man, what food have you got for us today?”

“If you touch anything in here before dinner I swear I will kill you.”

“You know these death threats are starting to get annoying. You never follow through with them.”

A smack can be heard from the kitchen, followed by Clint saying, “Ow!” He comes back in rubbing a red mark across his face. “Remember kids, anyone is fair game except Nat, Bucky, and Bruce. Don’t go after them if you want to live.”

Steve snorts. “I told you to stop trying to steal food from him.” He turns back to Isabella and Peter. “If you don’t stop around here, then fine. Continue at your own risk. But school starts up soon again, and if either of you get called to the principal's office because of a prank you pulled, you will regret it.”

Isabella nods. “Got it.”

“Steve, get in here and help me with food. Bruce is there, he’ll keep the three kids in line.”

“Hey, I resent that remark, Barnes!” Clint yells.

Isabella and Peter sit down at the table as Steve leaves the room to help Bucky.


	16. Chapter 16

Peter and Isabella start school again, and now they are in the second grade. They stay out of trouble while in school as much as they can, but they can’t help themselves from jumping in front of a bully if they see one, which leads them to be in the principal's office on more than one occasion.

Bucky speaks while his hand is covering his face. “The two of you were suspended for a day. Again. At this rate, you might not make it to third grade next year because of how much school you have missed.”

Isabella shrugs. “All I’m doing is stopping the bullies. I haven’t done anything wrong. The guy was beating up on another, smaller guy, who wasn’t fighting back! Someone had to defend him.”

Peter nods in agreement.

Bucky looks up at the ceiling and turns around. “Why do I always find myself with people like this. Steve, you need to leave. You’re rubbing off on these two too much.”

“Where do you expect me to go, Buck?”

“I dunno, Antarctica. That might be far enough so you’re stupid patriotic head can’t be seen from here.”

Bucky walks away, exasperated, as Pepper walks into the common area. “Peter, Tony told me what happened.”

“I shouldn’t have had to apologize to the guy! If I hadn’t been there, he would have taken that girls lunch money. She hardly has any money, she can’t afford it to be stolen! How else would she have eaten!”

Isabella nods, agreeing with Peter. 

Pepper stands in front of him, holding his eyesight with a firm look. “I understand that bullies are a problem, but have either of you thought about trying to get an adult before jumping into the fight? That would save you a lot of trouble and save all of us from having to make all these trips to the principal’s office. We shouldn’t be seeing the principal so much that we are on a first name basis. Promise me, next time you will go for an adult first. Okay? Both of you.”

They both nod and say, “I promise.” at the same time.

“Good.” She turns to Steve. “I have a meeting in D.C., so I have to go catch my flight. Can you watch Peter? Tony said he’s working on something that might be dangerous for Peter, so he can’t work in the labs with him today.”

Steve nods, and raises his voice enough so that Bucky can hear it, saying, “Yeah, I’ll take the kids down to Antarctica with me. It’ll be fun!”

“Oh shut up you punk!” comes Bucky’s response.

“Thank you, Steve.” Pepper then leaves, taking the elevator to the car waiting for her.

Bucky comes back into the room and says, “God, their teenager years are going to be awful.”

Steve nods and then looks at the two kids. “So, anything you want to do that won’t involve getting into trouble?”

They shrug. 

“Fine. Sit here and think about it. I’ll grab some drinks.”

He walks into the kitchen and Bucky follows him in. “This is great. I thought dealing with all the fights you got yourself into was enough, but now there’s not just one, but two new people who seem to get into every fight they can.”

“Yeah, and now they can actually get in trouble for it too.”

Bucky stops Steve from getting some cups out for a quick kiss. He pulls away and Steve raises an eyebrow. He shrugs. 

“I’m just a little stressed. And I don’t want to start baking, we already have a backlog of cookies in the freezer. I thought it might help.”

Steve leans in close to him. “Did it? Because I’m more than willing to help you out until you don’t feel stressed anymore.” He then kisses Bucky again, but they are cut off abruptly when the tower shakes, and a loud explosion can be heard.

“Jarvis? What was that?”

“It seems like we are under attack.”

“Shit,” Bucky curses. “Steve, go! I’ve got the kids.” Steve runs down the stairs as Bucky runs back to the couches where Peter and Isabella are.

“What was that Daddy?”

Bucky picks the two of them up. “Someone is attacking the tower. We need to get you somewhere safe.”

Bucky starts for the stairs, but is sidetracked when he sees the missile headed for the top of the building, where they are. He turns so his back is toward the missle and runs to the other side of the room, but the explosion still knocks him over. Luckily, it didn’t hurt anyone, but now the stairs are blocked by rubble and fire. Time for plan B.

Looking around the room, Bucky quickly moves the big and thick objects into a tight circle around the three of them.

“Look, you’ve got to stay here and keep your heads down, okay? We don’t want you getting hurt.” He peeks his head up over the table he moved and sees Tony in his suit carrying Steve and Natasha. He sets them down in the room and flies off again. 

Steve looks around the room in a rush, and sees Bucky’s head sticking out over top of the overturned table. He motions for Bucky to come over. Quickly, Bucky hops the table and goes to Steve, who hands him a gun. “Didn’t know if you had one on you or not. They’re climbing the building, Tony is going after the helicopter they have that blew this place up. Once Sam comes up with Clint, he’s going to join Tony. Bruce will only come up if he needs to. Are the kids okay?”

Bucky nods. “We made it without getting hurt. They’re hiding behind the table there.”

Natasha shoots the head that appears in the hole in the wall, and the robot falls.

“Why is it always damn robots?” Bucky asks as he shoots another one that appears.

An arrow protrudes through one of the robots, and it falls, Clint taking its place and running over to the others.

“I feel like they know we hate robots, so they make them again and again to mess with us. At least they don’t seem to be able to do anything special.”

Steve keeps his shield on him but doesn’t throw it, fearing he could toss it out the hole. Instead, he bashes the robots heads in with it.

There’s a steady stream of robots entering the hole in the wall, keeping the Avengers occupied. They don’t notice the robots who are climbing through the fire at the top of the stairs, sneaking up behind them.

When they do notice them, it’s after they hear the thwip of Peter’s webs. They turn and see a robot being pulled towards the kids, and watch as the blue flame of Isabella’s magic quickly dismembers it.

Natasha runs over to the two of them as the rest of the Avengers move to include the stairs in their range of sight.

“Stay down, okay? We don’t want you getting hurt.”

“But we can help!” says Peter. “We just took down that robot!”

“And there are hundreds more.” She shoots one that gets past the other Avengers. “We need you to stay safe.”

She goes running and jumps up on one of the robots, using her tasers to short circuit it.

Peter and Isabella keep their eyes above the table, watching the fight. Another two slip past the Avengers, and before any of them can turn around and take them out, the one is being thrown back outside with a blue fireball, and the other is covered in webs, not able to move.

Steve throws his shield at that one and knocks it over. He catches his shield and cuts the robot’s head off with it, then runs over to Peter and Isabella. “What are you doing? We told you to stay out of this!”

He stands and throws his shield at another robot coming close, and the robot goes down.

“What are we supposed to do, sit here and wait for the robots to slip through you and attack us? We’re just protecting ourselves!”

Before Steve can answer, the robots suddenly freeze, and then fall down. Sam and Tony come flying into the building. 

“We took out the source, and luckily for us, it caused the rest of the robots to shut down.” Tony looks around the room. “Sure is a mess in here, huh? Let’s clean up these robots and I’ll get some people up here to start fixing this.” He pulls a fire extinguisher off of the wall and puts the fire out.

“You two,” Bucky calls to Peter and Isabella. “The stairs are clear now. Go down and wait with Bruce. Don’t start protesting, there’s nothing here you can help us with.We will talk about this later.”

They nod and climb over the rubble, and then follow the instructions from Jarvis to find Bruce.


	17. Chapter 17

“Hey Peter, wait up!” Isabella calls out to him from down the hall of the school.

He turns around to see who was calling him, and when he sees that it’s Isabella, he stops and waits.

When she reaches him, she asks, “Were you going to leave without me?”

“No, I wasn’t, I was just going to wait for you outside.”

The two of them walk out of the building together. 

“Uncle Sam is supposed to be picking us up today, right?”

Peter nods. “Yep.” He starts to walk away from the school.

“Where are you going Peter, we need to wait for Uncle Sam!”

He turns around to face Isabella but continues to walk backwards. “He won’t be here for a while, don’t worry. I told him we had stuff to do after school so not to come right away.”

Isabella continues to follow him into a nearby alley. “And why did you do that?”

Peter stops in the middle of the alley and puts his bag down, opening it. He pulls something out and throws it to Isabella. “I wanted to get out.”

Isabella looks down at her costume in her hands and sees Peter pull his own costume out of his bag. “What is this for?”

“Isn’t it obvious? I wanna show them that we can handle ourselves. We can help people. Why would we sit around with powers like these and do nothing? After the tower was attacked they told us to stop putting ourselves in harm's way, but if it means saving others who can’t fight back...” Peter trails off, a far away look in his eyes. “Let’s just say I’m willing to risk it.”

“Maybe it’s because we can still get hurt out here?” Peter ignores her and jumps up to the roof to change. 

Isabella sighs and changes herself. Before joining Peter on the roof, she pulls out the phone Tony made for her.

Unsure of who would be available, she decides to send a text to Jarvis. _Peter wants to fight crime. Send help_

Isabella knows it’s dangerous, and doesn’t want either of them getting hurt. She was only helping with the robots to save herself, making sure they didn’t get close enough to her or Peter. If she wants to keep Peter safe though, she has to go with him. 

She puts the phone back in her bag and joins Peter on the roof. She sets the bag in the corner with his, and Peter motions for her to join him. 

“What’s wrong?” she says because of how tense he looks.

“Someone nearby is in trouble…” he trails off as he listens, and then suddenly he’s swinging across the road on a web and Isabella is stuck chasing after him. They end up outside a bank that has alarms going off. 

Peter bursts through the door of the bank and starts to fight, using his webs to pull guns out of people’s hands and tossing them on the floor. Isabella follows a few seconds later, and all the guns Peter is discarding have a small blue light trail around them, and it disassembles them.

Isabella blocks a punch from one of the nearby robbers just as the glass window in the front of the bank breaks, and something knocks the man down to the ground. In a few seconds, the rest of the robbers are all down on the ground, thanks to Iron Man. Peter looks at him but quickly moves away, pulling all the robbers together and trapping them in webs. 

As soon as he finishes, Tony grabs his hand and then Isabella’s and flies them out of the bank and onto a nearby roof.

“What the hell were you thinking Peter!” Tony says once he’s out of the suit.

Peter pulls his mask off and pouts. “I wanted to show you guys that we can help. How’d you even find me?”

Tony glances at Isabella, then decides, “I made your suit. I put a tracker in it. I saw that you weren’t at school anymore. Speaking of which, you really shouldn’t be bringing it to school.”

Peter crosses his arms and doesn’t say anything else.

Tony sighs. “Okay, let’s get your bags and get you home. We can talk more about this with everyone else.”

With Tony flying the two of them, it doesn’t take very long before they retrieved their school bags and were back in the tower. Isabella and Peter get changed into normal clothes, and then join everyone in the common area.

Isabella immediately goes over to Steve, and he pulls her up into his lap. Peter decides he still wants to pout, so he sits on the ceiling, away from everyone.

Tony, now completely out of his suit, clears his throat. “So, the kids got out in the streets again.”

Sam speaks up. “It was my fault. I should have confirmed with someone whether there was anything after school or not. I would have known to get them right after school then.”

Tony waves it off. “Peter’s taking after me, he’s getting really good at lying. It’s not your fault. What we need to do is find a way to prevent this.”

Bucky snorts from next to Steve. “What are you gonna do, take away the costumes? You know that wouldn’t stop them.”

“I know, I know. Which is why I thought, why don’t we give them what they want?”

Bruce speaks up from the notes he was looking over. “You mean let them out in the city where they can get hurt?”

Tony points at him. “Exactly. But with adult supervision.” He looks up at Peter. “How does that sound? We’ll let the two of you go out and fight crime as long as one of us is there with you to help.”

Peter looks down at him. “You mean it?”

Tony nods. “If we can’t stop you, might as well join you.”

Peter smiles. “That – That sounds like fun.”

“Okay, then it’s settled. Whoever picks the two of you up from school gets to decide whether they want to go out or not. If they do, then you can all spend a nice afternoon together seeing if you can find any crime. Meeting adjourned!”


	18. Chapter 18

It was a pretty good idea at first. Once or twice a week, Isabella and Peter would go crime fighting with one of the Avengers. It was never Bruce, because he didn’t think the Hulk was the right person to do simple crime fighting. Sam, Clint, and Thor were all over it, gladly helping the kids take out back alley thugs. Thor even brought Loki along a few times, more so to prove to the rest of the Avengers that he was good now. Natasha also did it a few times, if only to make sure the kids knew how to fight properly. Tony was half and half. Sometimes he’d take them out, sometimes he’d have some big project he was in the middle of and couldn’t take any more time away from it.

For Steve and Bucky, it was a different story. They always went together to pick Isabella and Peter up. It was in Steve’s nature to fight bullies, so of course he wanted to do it. Bucky, on the other hand, knew how reckless Steve could be, and didn’t necessarily want to be the only adult in the situation. Steve would almost always convince him to though, as if he wanted to do it even more than the kids. 

This is why the idea started to fall apart.

There was the threat of a thunderstorm this evening, and Steve barely convinced Bucky for them to all go out and have some fun before the storm hits. So Peter and Isabella change into their costumes, and the four of them start to search the streets for trouble. The threat of the storm seems to make the amount of crime even higher today, and Bucky is starting to get a bad feeling.

Peter and Isabella are busy restraining the last group of thugs they beat up when Bucky pulls Steve aside. 

“Steve, I don’t know about this anymore. Maybe we should head back now, something just – doesn’t feel right.”

Steve looks at Bucky, concerned. “What is it?”

Bucky sighs and puts his face in his hand. “I don’t know how to describe it, I – I think something bad’s gonna happen.”

Steve puts his hand on Bucky’s shoulder. “Okay, don’t stress over it. We’ll tell the kids and then get out of here, okay?”

Bucky nods. Before either of them can say anything else though, Peter yells, “There’s another one!” and starts to swing away towards it. Isabella chases behind him. 

“Hey, wait!” Bucky yells, but they are already too far away. Steve and Bucky start to chase after them, running through the alleys. A peal of thunder shatters the air, and suddenly, the clouds open up and it starts to pour. 

Steve and Bucky do the best they can in the rain to stay with Isabella and Peter, but they quickly lose them.

After turning down another street and still not seeing any signs of them, Bucky curses. 

“Shit. I knew something was going to happen. Now we’ve fucking lost them in New York in the middle of a storm. What the fuck are we supposed to do now?”

“Isabella doesn’t have her phone on her, so we can’t track it to find them…” They turn down another street as he thinks. “Wait, didn’t Tony say something about having a tracker in Peter’s suit?”

Steve blinks and Bucky already has his phone out, calling Tony.

“Hey, Cyborg, what can I do –”

“Do you have a tracker in Peter’s suit?”

There’s a pause. “I do. Why?”

“The rain separated Steve and I from the two of them.” Lightning flashes ominously. 

“Okay, I’m sending directions to your phone now. I’d come help, but I’m currently stuck in the bottom half of a new suit that won’t move or come off.”

“It’s okay, we’ve got it. Thanks.” Bucky ends the call and a map appears on his screen, with a small dot blinking several blocks away.

“Follow me,” he says to Steve.

The rain has already completely soaked through their clothes, and Bucky is grumbling about how Isabella and Peter are going to catch a cold if they stay out here with wet clothes. As they grow closer to the spot, neither of them can hear anything nearby, even with the serum’s enhanced hearing.

The dot still hasn’t moved, and Bucky starts to fear that something bad did happen. What if Hydra found them and took Isabella and left Peter unconscious or dead in the middle of an alley –

His thoughts are interrupted as he watches the dot move, and sees movement up ahead coming out of one of the alleys. Two small figures emerge, leaning against each other to help them move.

Steve and Bucky are by their side in a second, assessing their conditions and asking all sorts of questions.

“Sorry we lost you, Uncle Bucky. I should have been paying more attention.” Peter has a black eye and is holding his side, meaning either bruised or broken ribs.

“We realized you weren’t around only after we started to fight.” Isabella is limping and her left leg is swollen, meaning it’s more than likely broken. She’s also bleeding from a cut across her forehead.

“It’s okay, it started to rain and we lost you. It was our fault as much as it was yours.” He looks behind them to the alley. “Where’d they go?”

“Issy spooked them, I think.”

Bucky raises an eyebrow and carefully picks Isabella up. Steve does the same to Peter. They start to walk back to the tower as the rain starts to ease off.

Isabella shrugs. “I don’t know what it was. All I did was use a little magic, no one usually runs away from that.”

Peter snorts, wincing at the movement in his side before saying, “A little magic? You made a lion with your magic and it chased them out of the alley.”

“Did I?” Isabella tried to remember. “I know I couldn’t stand because of whatever they did to my leg, and then they hit me in the head, but after…”

Steve shares a look with Bucky. “It’s okay, Issy, you probably have a concussion. Memory loss isn’t uncommon with them.”

They step into the tower and immediately head up to the medical floor. Steve and Bucky sit in the waiting area as the doctors take Isabella and Peter from them to help them. A nurse comes out with towels for Bucky and Steve to dry off with. Bucky is staring off into the distance, lost in thought.

The elevator opens, and Pepper and Tony step off of it.

“What happened?” Pepper asks. “Jarvis told us to come down here because of Peter.”

Steve spreads his hands out in an ‘I don’t know’ gesture. “We couldn’t get a straight story from them. It started raining and we were separated from them, and when we found them they were like this.”

“It doesn’t help that Issy can’t remember most of it,” Bucky says under his breath.

Pepper looks at him questioningly, but Bucky doesn’t say anything else, so Steve starts to rub his back and answers for him.

“Isabella was hit in the head with something. She probably has a concussion, so she doesn’t remember much of the fight. What Peter has told us is they were fighting and Isabella made a lion that chased the guys out of the alley and away from them after they had been hurt.”

Tony sighs and sinks into a chair. “This is all my fault.”

Pepper sits next to him and puts her hand on his arm comfortingly. “It is not your fault, Tony.”

“How could you say that? It was my idea to actually let them do what they wanted, to be out there and helping people. If I hadn’t said anything –”

Pepper cuts him off. “If you hadn’t said anything you know they would have still been sneaking out there, doing it behind our backs. Think about it – if they had been out alone today, they would have had to walk back to the tower by themselves in the rain while injured. So what, Steve and Bucky were separated from them, it happens. No one can control the weather besides Thor, and he wasn’t there.”

Steve nods. “I’m sure after a few days Isabella will remember again, and we can see about getting a better story out of the two of them. For now, we don’t take them out again until they are both completely healed after this, and we put some rules in place around these outings so they won’t happen again.” He shakes his head. “I know what it’s like to have something normal people don’t and not be able to use it. It can eat away at you. So, it would be better to continue doing this. Besides, they can’t stay out of harm's way forever, can they? It’s all part of the job.”

Tony sinks into his chair further, still not completely forgiving himself, but understanding what everyone else is saying. 

After an hour, the two kids finally come back out to the waiting room. Peter has bandages wrapped around his abdomen and an ice pack on his eye. Isabella has a bandage across her forehead and crutches, using them so she doesn’t walk on the yellow cast that’s on her leg.

The rest of that night, whatever happened in the alley isn’t brought up again.


	19. Chapter 19

Steve decided the yellow cast was too boring to look at, so the next day he sits down with Isabella and draws on it, covering it in flowers. 

Bucky was still a little reclusive, staring off into space more often than usual. Isabella not being able to remember anything brought up some unwanted memories of his, even if the two memory losses were for completely different reasons.

Everyone finds out that Peter has some kind of advanced healing powers too, when he’s almost normal too quickly for the injuries he had.

The memory was coming back to Isabella in bits and pieces, and she tried to tell someone whenever they came back. Peter seemed to be too focused on fighting and forgot most of what happened, so he just confirms whatever Isabella says when it comes to her, as if it made him remember too.

“Do you know anything about an octopus?” Isabella asks one day to anyone in the common room who was listening. 

Steve, who had been busy propping her leg up, had heard her and said, “I don’t know much about them. I know they live in water,” he supplies, gaining an eye roll from Bucky.

“They have three hearts,” Bucky says, giving her actual information on an octopus.

Natasha says from the other side of the room, “And nine brains.”

“Who needs nine brains?” Clint asks through a mouthful of popcorn.

“Maybe you should go befriend an octopus, they might let you take one of theirs so you can actually have a brain.”

Clint throws a piece of popcorn at Natasha in response.

“What is an octopus?” asks Thor, gaining an eye roll from Loki.

“They have eight tentacles,” Peter supplies. “They have those suction cup thingys all over their tentacles. It’s weird.”

“What about a – a white octopus?” Isabella asks.

Bruce answers with, “Well, there are all sorts of different octopus species, so there has to be a few that are white. There are also some that can change colors to hide themselves, so some of those could be white too.”

Bucky sticks a hand out and ruffles Isabella's hair. “Why are you so interested in octopuses all of a sudden, squirt?”

Isabella frowns and furrows her eyebrows. “I – I’m not sure.”

“Do you know what this octopus looks like?”

Isabella nods. Steve reaches to the table next to him and grabs a pen and some paper.

He hands it to Isabella. “Do you think you could try to draw it for us? It might help for your questions.”

She nods again, and takes a second to think before starting to draw. 

Tony enters the room. “Hey Peter, did you ever find out what happened to your school bag?”

“Uhh…” He furrows his brows. “I forgot about the old one. Maybe we didn’t pick them up before coming back last time we were out?”

“Okay, I’ll send a suit out to see if they are still there. Capsicle, do you remember where you hid them?”

“Yeah, on the roof of that office building next to the school.”

Tony presses some buttons and then sits down to join the group. “So, what’d I miss?”

“Issy’s been asking questions about octopuses. Seems pretty important.” Steve gestures to her. “She’s drawing it now, I thought maybe it would help us answer her questions better.”

Bucky looks over Isabella’s shoulder at what she is drawing and his head tilts as his eyes grow wide with concern.

She finishes her drawing and turns it around for everyone to see. Suddenly everyone is looking at it in concern. 

“Where did you see this?” Sam asks.

“I think those men who beat us up were wearing it.”

“Sir, there are no bags at the spot Captain Rogers gave.”

Tony nods. “Okay, someone must have been up there and cleaned them up or something. It was a couple weeks ago. Hey everyone, why don’t we go downstairs and talk about this? Pep will you watch the kids?”

She nods, and everyone quickly leaves the room, leaving Peter and Isabella.

Everyone enters the meeting room tense. Bucky is mad – his frustration gets the best of him and he punches the wall, leaving a hole in it. 

He looks at his arm in the wall before removing it and turning Tony. “Sorry. I’ll fix it.”

Tony shakes his head. “I’ll get someone up here do fix it later, don’t worry about it. We have more pressing issues to discuss.”

“Yeah, like how the hell the kids managed to find Hydra agents in an alley in New York and were able to walk away with their lives,” says Sam. “It might have been a crude child’s drawing, but I’m sure we all saw that it looked like their symbol. Hydra doesn’t show mercy. So why did they run?”

Steve stands next to Bucky, rubbing his temples. “Isabella was there.”

Sam looks to Steve. “Yeah? So?”

Bucky sees where Steve is going, so he answers. “Remember how we got Issy? We stole her. Because Hydra was looking for her. What if they found out we took her with us? How would it look to your boss if you can say that you successfully found something they have been looking for for years? My guess is they tried to knock Isabella out to take her with them, and that’s why she has the cut on her forehead. But when she didn’t go down, and was putting up a fight, they decided it would just be better to leave, and possibly return later with reinforcements?”

“How would these Hydra people know that this child is the child they have been looking for?” Thor asks.

Steve sighs. “I don’t know. But that doesn’t mean we can cross the possibility off of the list. The doctor is supposed to take Issy’s cast off before she goes to school tomorrow, so at least we know she can defend herself properly if something happens.”

Tony says, “I’ll double the guard around the school. They’ll keep an eye out, and if something happens they’ll let me know. I’ll also see if I can go back and find recordings of that night, maybe we can track down the Hydra cell in new York before they make a move.”

Natasha nods. “Unless they wiped them already, of course. It has been a few weeks. Clint, want to come do some scouting with me?”

“Sure, Nat. As long as we don’t get in trouble with the police. Again.”

“Last time was entirely your fault and you know it.”

Sam cuts in. “Let’s not get into this again guys. You can argue more later by yourselves. Loki, is there any way your magic could track them?”

“Perhaps. Tracking magic is very particular, it requires a great deal to work properly, and being that it was so long ago, it might not work at all.”

“So there’s a chance it could work,” says Steve. “Natasha, Clint, mind taking Loki along with you so he can try to track them?”

Clint opens his mouth to protest, but Steve fixes him with a stern look, so instead he closes his mouth, looks up at the ceiling, and groans. “Ugh, fine. But if we get in trouble with the police again I’m blaming it on Loki, I don’t care who it was.”

The three of them leave the room together, and other members of the team start to disperse as well. Steve and Bucky stay with Tony to help him add more guards and more posts to the perimeter they have set up around the school.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to thank you all for over 3000 hits already!! It means so much to me that people like my silly little story. I can't believe it's coming to a close soon, too :'( Thanks again for reading!! <3


	20. Chapter 20

Now that Isabella is out of the cast, her and Peter take their costumes with them to school, with promises from Sam that he will take them out after school. While most of the Avengers are weary about letting the kids back out again when they know Hydra is out there, they also know that if they want to keep the kids from worrying or being upset over it, they need to keep things as normal as they can.

Peter and Isabella are sitting in class reading when the lights go out. It causes their teacher to pause and look up at them, which is about all she gets to do before the windows leading outside shatter, letting in people wearing bullet proof vests and carrying guns.

The kids start to scream, all of them scrambling for the exit as the men look around the room. Peter and Isabella spare a glance between them before they are running out too, but not before they grab their school bags. 

The class has split in two, half of them running to the left and the other half running to the right. Other classrooms nearby are also starting to flood the hallways as the kids try to escape, more men following them out into the hallways. The men enter the hallway and split up as well, calling out, “Peter Parker! Isabella Barnes! Show yourselves!”

Peter and Isabella duck into a nearby closet and quickly get changed in the dark.

“They must have found our school bags that day we forgot to grab them. They’re wearing the same octopus symbol as the other guys.” 

Isabella pulls her phone out of her bag. “Dang it, the phone’s dead. I could have sworn I charged it last night.”

“What do we do then?” asks Peter. “They already took us down once. We can’t let them stay here with all the kids while they’re looking for us, what if they start shooting the others?”

Isabella pulls her mask on. “We run. Get them outside, away from everyone, and hope someone else comes to help.”

Peter pulls his mask on and nods, and Isabella moves her hand to the door. “On three. One, two…”  
~~~  
The Avengers were relaxing together in the common room when Jarvis pulls the news up for them.

“There is an attack in progress at an elementary school here in New York, reports say several men are there with loaded weapons, looking for two kids in particular. Shots have been heard. An EMP has caused several blocks surrounding the area to lose power.”

The Avengers are all up and running around in a split second, everyone trying to get what they need quickly before they can run over to the school. Even Loki is getting ready.

“The school’s just a couple blocks away, so transportation is going to suck,” says Tony through the comms they all already have in as he puts on his suit. “Three of us can fly, which means we can carry five people since Thor’s other hand is for his hammer. So, uhh, there’s not enough of us.”

Steve and Bucky, completely ready, leave the elevator on the ground floor. “Bucky and I will run. We’re leaving now.”

Since the two soldiers can run faster than a normal man, they make it to the school in about a minute, and are met with the sight of dozens of armored cars lining the perimeter of the school with the Hydra symbol on them, and none of the guards they had set around the edge of the school in sight. They push past the police barrier and look inside the cars – all of them seem to be empty. Which means there could be any number of Hydra agents here.

They run to the schoolyard, and there, Peter swings above them, shooting webs at the agents and taunting, “Who even uses an octopus as a symbol for an evil organization?”

“It’s a Hydra, not an octopus!” one of the men shouts.

Isabella responds with, “A Hydra? I’ve never heard of it. You must be some low level evil organization, not anyone important.” The man turns and shoots at her, but the bullet’s go right through her, and Peter pulls the real Isabella along with him on a web to deliver a flying kick right to the guys face. She lands on the ground in a roll and spots Steve and Bucky.

They decide it's time to make their presence known, so Bucky pulls a pistol out and shoots one of the agents in the head. Steve’s shield goes flying and takes a Hydra agent by surprise, and now half of them turn their attention to the two newcomers.

One of them laughs and says, “You’ve kept our property from us for this long, do you really think you can still protect her? We will make quick work of the two of you and the Spider child, and then reclaim our weapon. Just imagine how quickly we can take over the world with her talents in our control!” He starts to laugh again, but is cut short after a knife lands in his chest, killing him. Loki falls down shortly after, having been carried over by Thor.

“That is what you deserve you mongrel!” Loki spits on the dead man's corpse.

Thor lands in the middle of the school yard and throws his hammer, knocking over several Hydra agents. Isabella catches it and swings it at the agents near her, knocking them down, before throwing it back to Thor.

Arrows sprout from agents Isabella was disarming as Clint appears on the roof, and Hulk crashes through the gates, smashing any Hydra agent who gets in his way.

Steve throws his shield and suddenly hears, “On your left!” being yelled, and he watches as Sam flies past him and kicks an agent in the chest, and then winks at Steve before flying away again.

Tony flies over head and drops Natasha next to Peter, who is in the middle of a fist fight with a Hydra agent. She helps him dispatch the guy. Tony himself stays in the air, keeping an eye on the perimeter and catching any strays trying to leave or trying to come in.

With all eleven heroes working together, they were able to over take the Hydra agents, even though they were outnumbered.

When the last of the agents finally falls, Tony lands and his face plate lifts up. He goes straight to Peter and pulls him in close for a hug.

Steve and Bucky do the same to Isabella, squeezing her in between them as they hugged. 

“I’m so glad you’re okay,” Bucky says, voice muffled by Isabella’s hair.

“I tried to contact you but my phone was dead. I’m glad you all still made it.”

“They knocked the power out pumpkin, it’s okay.”

Tony pulls away from Peter long enough to say, “Peter, oh my God were you taunting them?”

Peter scratches the back of his neck. “We didn’t want them near the other kids, so we taunted them as they chased us out of the school and to try and keep them contained here.”

Tony hugs him again. “I’m just glad you aren’t hurt, bud. Pepper’s gonna rip us both a new one when we get back to the tower.”

The other Avengers look on at the two groups in silence, letting them have their time without interruptions. When the police finally arrive and they are still hugging, the others take charge and talk to the officers to explain what happened.

Steve and Bucky finally let go of Isabella when the Police are done asking questions. Tony let’s go of Peter as well. 

“Come on, squirt, lets get you back to the tower. I think we should celebrate over some ice cream.”

“Yeah! Ice cream!” she says as Bucky picks her up and puts her on his shoulders. 

He laughs. “Maybe we’ll make some cake to go with it.”

The Avengers leave the school grounds together, walking back to the tower, enjoying the moment together.


	21. Epilogue

“Isabella, are you ready?” Steve calls from the living room.

“Just a second Dad!” She smooths out her blue dress and looks over herself in the mirror one last time before leaving her room.

In the living room, Steve and Bucky are waiting for her, each dressed in a suit and tie.

Steve adjusts his tie. “I look ridiculous in this thing.”

Isabella rolls her eyes. “You look fine, Dad.”

“I have to agree with Issy, you look absolutely fantastic.”

Steve’s cheeks grow pink, and he clears his throat. “Anyways, it’s not like today is about me. I’m just there to stand there and look pretty.”

“You always look pretty to me.” Bucky moves close and sneaks a quick kiss from Steve.

“Daaad, stop with the cheesy lines and let’s get going! You know Uncle Tony will get mad at you if you make us late to one more thing.” She starts to walk to the elevator, but Bucky sticks his arm out, stopping her.

“Hold your horses squirt, we’re in no rush.” He pulls her in front of him and looks at her dress. “You look amazing in that dress.”

“Aunt Nat picked it out.”

“Of course she did. Now, let me savor this moment. It’s not every day your little princess grows into an adult, after all.”

She rolls her eyes again. “Our birthday was a while ago, dad. I’ve been eighteen for a while now. We had to wait for Peter to turn eighteen too before we could do this. Aunt Pepper said so.”

Steve puts his hand on Bucky’s shoulder. “Come on, we need to get going.”

The three of them enter the elevator together, and when they are let out, they are met by a nervous looking Peter.

“Heh– Hey, there you guys are! I was starting to worry.”

Isabella narrows her eyes. “Are you nervous, Peter?”

He starts to deny it, but then changes his mind and says, “A little.”

Isabella slings an arm around him. “Come on, Peter, it’s just a little press conference! And Uncle Tony is doing most of the talking anyways. We just have to wave hi and maybe answer some questions, but Aunt Pepper is screening them to make sure nothing will be uncomfortable for us to answer. I’ll try to answer most of them if that helps you feel any better.”

Tony and Pepper come over from the other side of the room. Tony nods to Steve and Bucky, and then faces Peter and Isabella. “You two ready?”

They nod, and Isabella removes her arm from around Peter’s shoulders, straightening her dress again. Tony leads them through the doors on the other side of the room, and they enter a room full of cameras and journalists. 

All of their talking fades off as Tony takes the podium. Isabella stands between Steve and Bucky on one side of the podium, and Peter stands next to Pepper on the other side.

Tony spreads his arms out in greetings. “I am so glad you all could make it here today! As we had said, today is a special day in the Avengers Tower. Today, we officially welcome two new heroes to the Avengers. We have fought alongside them for many years, and now, we get to make it official.” He gestures to Isabella. “Meet Isabella Barnes, also known as The Sorceress!”

She steps forward and waves as cameras flash.

Tony then gestures to Peter. “And Peter Parker-Stark, also known as Spider-Man!”

He steps forward and waves too, and Tony gestures for the two of them to come closer. He stays at the podium, and hands each of them a mike of their own.

“We will now take questions.”

Immediately almost all of the reporters are trying to ask questions. Tony scans the crowd and picks people.

“Peter, is it true that you were bitten by a spider and that gave you your powers?”

He nods. “Yeah, I killed it though.”

Tony picks another person to ask a question.

“Peter, what was it like to be raised by Tony Stark?”

His cheeks grow pink, and he stammers, “It, uh, it was great. I learned a lot from him. Helped him out in the lab a lot.”

Another person is picked.

“Isabella, I had to ask, if your last name is Barnes, does this mean that Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes are your parents?”

She nods and says, “Yes, they adopted me when I was young, which is why they never made it public. After that, it was a matter of trying to give me as much of a normal life as possible, so they kept me away from the press as much as they could.”

The next three questions come right after each other before Tony could pick another person.

“Isabella, how did Captain Rogers and Sergeant Barnes find you?”

“Isabella, how is it that you gained your powers?”

“Isabella, is it true that you fought off Hydra when you were only in second grade? How?”

Isabella simply smiles. “Well, it all started in Europe...”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, I can't believe this is over! I got really emotional editing this chapter.
> 
> I want to give a huge thanks to Writing_and_Fighting, I never would have gotten this done without you supporting me and letting me run my silly ideas past you.
> 
> Thanks to everyone who has been reading, commenting, and giving kudos as well, I love you all <3
> 
> Now for the big reveal: I started an outline for part two! It will take me a while before that comes out though, as I am working on some other wips and want to finish a few of them first. [Come follow my tumblr for updates!](https://pearlll09.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Thank you all again. :)
> 
> Update: The sequel should be coming out this June, 2019!


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